Top Common Engine Problems 2007-Present Toyota Tundra Truck

Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today in the studio, we have a Second-Generation Toyota Tundra. I wanted to go over some of the top engine problems that you might come to find. Let's get started.

Now, for our first problem, we're gonna talk about oil leaks. It's gonna be very common on your Tundra to have valve cover leaks. You're gonna notice that you have a little bit of oil coming out and, of course, it's gonna accumulate debris. Also commonly for oil leaks on this, you're gonna have a cam tower oil leak. If you go inside your driver-side wheel well, you can see right where I have the yellow crayon on there. Right up above it is the valve cover. And there's a gasket. And then underneath that is the cam tower. Underneath the cam tower, there's another gasket that goes down to where it mounts onto the engine or the block of the engine. In between those areas, there's almost always gonna be an oil leak. Some of the symptoms that you might happen to find if you're having an issue with an oil leak might potentially be a burning oil smell coming from the engine compartment. You might also happen to notice that your engine oil goes low. You hear a little bit of a ticking noise coming from your engine because the engine oil is low. If you don't check it and it keeps leaking out, you're gonna find that you have a major issue.

Why might you have an oil leak? Well, typically it's because for the valve cover itself, there's gonna be a gasket that's located in between there. Generally, that just kind of gets stiff over time, breaks down, and then oil seeps by it. For the cam tower though, on the other hand, that doesn't necessarily have a gasket per se. You use something that looks a little bit more like this. This is like a gasket maker. It's like a little goo. You go ahead and squirt it all over that, you press it down in, you torque it down the way that it's supposed to be. That's great and everything, but over time, it breaks down just like anything else, and then, of course, you're gonna have an oil leak.

So let's say that you decide to fix the oil leak on your own. If you're replacing the valve cover gaskets, easy-peasy. If you're doing those cam tower gaskets though, that's a complete other story. This is gonna be a very big job. You're gonna have to take apart the entire top of your engine, the front of your engine, take off the timing chain that's under there, and then, of course, take off those cam towers. When you do all that, of course, when it comes all back together, you're gonna have to make sure that you time the vehicle in the end. So, if you don't know much about timing your engine, well, it's probably not a job that you're gonna wanna do. This can take several hours. And if you're gonna pay somebody else to do it, well, it's gonna cost you a lot of money.

Next, we're gonna talk about your water pump. Your water pump on this truck is gonna be located right on the front, and it's gonna be with the belt system. For the water pumps on this, what can tend to go bad would be essentially the inside bearings here. When your belt spins, it's gonna spin this impeller right here, and, of course, inside this area, there has to be some bearings. Over time the bearings wear out, of course. And when that happens, you start to get a little bit of movement coming from here. I can't really feel it like this, but, of course, with the pressure of the belt and everything else on there, it might be a little bit different. If this gets very bad, you could potentially have a coolant leak that comes from around this area here or, of course, you might even have an overheating condition, where this is spinning, but for some reason, it's not spinning this properly and, of course, it's not circulating the coolant the way that it should. If your coolant can't circulate because your water pump is not functioning properly, well, you're gonna have an issue.

So how's a person supposed to know if they have an issue with their water pump? Well, of course, like I said before, you might find that you have an overheating condition. You might also find that you have an underheating condition. You go ahead and turn on the heat coming from those vents. For some reason, only cool air is coming through. Why is that? Because the coolant's a little bit low, it's not getting pushed through your heater core. So, of course, the blower motor is not gonna be able to grab that hot air, because it's not hot, and then suck it through into the passenger compartment. So it's only really gonna be lukewarm. Other than that, you might happen to look underneath the truck and see that you have drips of coolant under there. That's gonna tell you that you have an issue and it's something that you're gonna want to check out. So, if you're having a cooling issue, you could potentially cause major damage to your engine. So, for fixing the water pump on this, you're in luck. It's not really the hardest job. It is a little bit timely though. So what you're gonna have to do is drain the coolant so there's no coolant inside your system. You're gonna go ahead and have to take off this coolant hose, remove this, and then, of course, we're gonna remove that belt.

We'll get the fan right out of the way after that. And then you should be able to access where the water pump is, which is over to the left of where the fan mounts. At that point, you would just take the pulley off of it, which mounts right here, you would take off the thermostat housing that comes along this area, and then, of course, all the rest of your mounting bolts. Go ahead and take it right off of there and inspect it. After that, go ahead and clean down the engine where it mounts to, and then get ready to reinstall your brand new water pump.

The next problem that's super common on these trucks has to do with your secondary air injection pumps. Now, these pumps are gonna be located inside the passenger side wheel well of your truck, and there's two of them. They're right here. What are the secondary air pumps even for? Well, essentially what they're supposed to do is turn on for approximately one minute after you originally start up the engine. What this is gonna help you do is to warm up the engine quicker, so it helps with reducing emissions that come out your tailpipe and into the environment.

Symptoms that you're probably gonna have if you're having issues with your secondary air injection system could potentially be a check engine light that comes on in your dash. You might also notice poor fuel economy or even runnability issues. What these pumps are supposed to do is draw air in through these tubes right here. It comes right down into the pump where there's a big, old impeller. It's gonna circulate air and then blow it out through these tubes. These tubes lead up to your engine where you have some valves. Now what can happen with these though is if you follow these tubes up, there's an area where moisture or even debris can make its way into these induction tubes right along here, work its way into the pumps, and then, of course, it can get circulated up through these tubes to those valves. So you could potentially cause damage to the valves which are located inside your engine compartment, or even to the pumps themselves. Either way, like I said, check engine light, runnability issues, and decreased fuel economy.

Now, a preventative maintenance tip for this would be to just go ahead and put something over it like what this person did here. Because these tubes, like I said, just lead up and they're an induction tube that leads down to the pumps. So any debris that you can keep from getting inside of this and causing an issue it's, of course, gonna help you out in the long run. Now that's what you would do if you're trying to be proactive in fixing this problem before something actually occurred and you had a check engine light. You would just go ahead and fix that little tube up along the top there, and that's gonna help keep debris and moisture out of there. But let's say for some reason you didn't take care of it. Well, you probably didn't even know about it until this video. If that's the case, more than likely if you're having an issue, you've got a check engine light, you've got the fuel economy issue, more than likely what you're gonna have to do is replace both of those pumps that are located inside that fender well.

You're also gonna have to follow those tubes up here, along the top of the engine. Those are gonna lead some valves that are right up inside here, and to get to those, you're actually gonna have to take apart the entire upper part of your engine right here to be able to access those valves. What can happen with those valves? Well, of course, with those pumps, like I said, sucking in debris or even moisture, it's gonna cause an issue where it ends up getting forced all the way up here to the valves and causes an issue with the valves as well. So, if you're gonna replace those pumps, you're more than likely gonna have to replace the valves as well. With that said, that's gonna be a very costly job. So you're gonna want to be proactive and either replace those inlet tubes with the aftermarket ones or updated ones, or even just take something like what this person has here and just go ahead and carefully put it over it so that way there, it keeps the moisture and debris from making its way into the inlet tubes.

Okay, friends, so that's pretty much what I've got for you for some of the top common engine problems on this 5.7 Toyota Tundra. I hope you learned a little something, I hope it helped you out. If it did, go ahead and smash on that like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell that way there, you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.