Howdy, I have a trusty '96 4runner V6 with a bazillion miles (417k) and recently (probably a few years at least, it's my son's vehicle, he doesn't complain much) , it's felt sluggish whenever you push the gas pedal past about 10%.
Meaning, it drives fine, even feels moderately peppy in slow speed situations, it's a 5sp no problem going through the gears but as you get up to where you need more power (i.e. highway speed or up hills, or passing literately anything) it just doesn't have a lot of power, it actually feels more powerful with less gas pedal pushed.
So, just connected an OBDII thing and drove around and watched a few things, the most interesting was the ignition timing. Once warned up at idle it was ~10-12 degrees, as I'd lightly accelerate it'd quickly go up to 30 degrees (seems to cap out there, that's the highest I saw), felt good, but as I would pushing on the gas pedal more the timing advance would go down. I'd be cruising at 60mph, gas pedal barely pushed and it'd be at say 25 degrees advanced, then I'd floor it and it'd drop the timing advance to 4 degrees and slowly climb to maybe 7 or 8 degrees as I got to say 4000 rpms, felt sluggish. As I let off the gas pedal the timing would jump right to 30 degrees advanced quickly, totally dependent on throttle position.
I'm not a timing expert but that felt weird and seemed wrong/backeards to me, but I don't really know. One of the codes the computer previously had (but not currently, was cleared, hasn't came back yet) was a knock sensor failure (which is why I'm even looking at timing), so I'm wondering if the computer thinks the knock sensor is registering a knock and thus just drops the timing down dramatically. Not sure how I'd know that, the cheap OBD2 thing I was using was not the most sophisticated and I doubt it has that level of visibility into the computer's decisions.
So anyone more familiar with what a normal ignition timing graph would look like with this? It looks like it's quite a pain to replace the knock sensors but driving across the country several times with it being sluggish kinda sucks too (and gas mileage is terrible with a constant load, looking at you Chicago wind!).
Any help or thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Meaning, it drives fine, even feels moderately peppy in slow speed situations, it's a 5sp no problem going through the gears but as you get up to where you need more power (i.e. highway speed or up hills, or passing literately anything) it just doesn't have a lot of power, it actually feels more powerful with less gas pedal pushed.
So, just connected an OBDII thing and drove around and watched a few things, the most interesting was the ignition timing. Once warned up at idle it was ~10-12 degrees, as I'd lightly accelerate it'd quickly go up to 30 degrees (seems to cap out there, that's the highest I saw), felt good, but as I would pushing on the gas pedal more the timing advance would go down. I'd be cruising at 60mph, gas pedal barely pushed and it'd be at say 25 degrees advanced, then I'd floor it and it'd drop the timing advance to 4 degrees and slowly climb to maybe 7 or 8 degrees as I got to say 4000 rpms, felt sluggish. As I let off the gas pedal the timing would jump right to 30 degrees advanced quickly, totally dependent on throttle position.
I'm not a timing expert but that felt weird and seemed wrong/backeards to me, but I don't really know. One of the codes the computer previously had (but not currently, was cleared, hasn't came back yet) was a knock sensor failure (which is why I'm even looking at timing), so I'm wondering if the computer thinks the knock sensor is registering a knock and thus just drops the timing down dramatically. Not sure how I'd know that, the cheap OBD2 thing I was using was not the most sophisticated and I doubt it has that level of visibility into the computer's decisions.
So anyone more familiar with what a normal ignition timing graph would look like with this? It looks like it's quite a pain to replace the knock sensors but driving across the country several times with it being sluggish kinda sucks too (and gas mileage is terrible with a constant load, looking at you Chicago wind!).
Any help or thoughts on this would be appreciated.
