For those mechanically supersmart

General Off-Topic
1

I’m still learning of course, but i’m a lot better than i used to be.

anyway, selling my fiance’s old beat to hell toyota truck and I’ve tuned the sucker to the point where it sat for 5 months, and started up with the turn of a key, the sucker runs like a champ and is getting 25mpg. Its doing GREAT but I ran into what I think to be either brake or tranny issues yesterday.

So I get it across town, get it home, realize no brake fluid in it. I bled the brakes after putting in new fluid and it stopped perfect.

Now I went to take it on a test drive and it wouldn’t get into 1st meaning i’d get it to the slack point, through the friction point on clutch and give it gas and it would start to get into gear and then would act like the rear tires wouldn’t go. It would die, and the rear tires would lock up.

I’m thinking “WTF?”.

So I put it in reverse because I was in the middle of the road, no problems, goes into reverse and into gear fine. I’m like “maybe its a fluke.” put it in 1st, get to going and it does the same thing, and then the tires lock up and nothing but in reverse it’s good.

Finally after several expletives I got the sucker goign in 1st at 5mph, and romped on the gas, and it went… and as soon as i shifted to second it was like someone was on the brakes and it wanted to slow WAY down, got it in second, and then it seemed to get better. About 5 blocks down i turned it around, and it went into gear just fine… I parked it and it seemed fine.

So what could allow it to go BACKWARDS with no issues but not forwards? It almost felt like the ebrake was on, but the ebrake will lock up in both reverse and forward won’t it? Unless I’m missing something.

I’m going to test the little SOB again tonight so we’ll see. Any ideas though greatly appreciated, this appears to be the last little bug I gotta kink out of this son of a bitch before I sell it.

So far I have done plugs, wires, coil maintenance, brake bleeding, new valve cover gasket, oil change, filter change, vacuum leak check, suspension maintenance and rewired the SOB.

2

drum brakes on the rear- i’m guessing–if so they won’t necessarily lock up in reverse. there will be some drag but usually not enough to hold it from moving. forward is a different story. jack it up with both wheels off the ground in neutral. check for slack in the cables, usually a good sign

3

yep, drum in the rear, you have a point… i’ll check that when i get home, thanks dean :slight_smile:

4

also the no brake fluid may mean that you probably have a bad wheel cylinder. brake fluid doesn’t evaporate so it had to go somewhere. lok for moisture around the drums… what i think happened was the ebrake stuck on and left a gap between the brake shoe and the wheel cylinder, and when you hit the brakes it pushed the piston all the way out and emptied the resivior. getting the brake drums off will be a real pain uf you can’t get the e-brake to release.

5

Yeah, we never checked it until recently (because she really never drove it much), so i’m not sure, i looked for leaks and didn’t see any but will check that all once i get home.

6

while i’m thinking about it, if you do end up changing wheel cyl. change both of them