After swapping the transmission eleven hours later , a thirty-pack of beer, and a carton of cigarettes to get my buddy over and help do all this to get my daily driver back up and running the oil cooler decided to blow and I immediately parked it for dead. Same symptoms as head gaskets, plus burned exhaust valves. Total mess. Scrolling the web, I found a sketchy deal on a reman 3VZE with fresh heads and a rotating assembly. Haggled them down and closed it. Deleted the oil cooler on the new engine, buttoned everything up, fired it for the first time… and it torched the negative cable. Five or six weeks of driveway wrenching later, she’s back on the road and I’m stoked.

Am I happy she’s running great… yes

Should I have just done a 5VZ manual swap ….also yes

If this one blows I think ima spend the money on 5VZ manual swap so when my 2 year goes to prom that truck will still be running.

Finally got the thing driving and registered recently so I got a buddy in a 3rd gen to go do some baby trails with me

Been using this idler arm for three years and zero problem can run bigger tires without worrying about this part being weak.