Hello, I need help with my good old 1997 V6 SR5. Was running fine, when I had to drive through trechorous winter conditions last week. Travelled 40miles through Ice, snow, and many flooded roads (around 6 inches deap). After driving it, it sat in my garage for 3 days in an unheated garage. Starting her up 3 days later I noticed an knocking or tapping sound coming somewhere toward the front of the engine. She ran fine, but noise continued. After driving her around 15 miles, I hit stop and go traffic on highway for 10 minutes and notice my temperature gauge climbing upwards. When got back up to 60 mph for 15 miles to drive home, the temperature went back down. Had it looked at and found the radiator empty. Took the belts of and noise still continued. Noise does not seem to be a direct correlation with the RPM's of the motor. Noise did not go away after filling the radiator back up. Never noticed any initial coolant leaks, and nothing after I refilled the radiator with coolant. Any ideas? Thanks. Jon C.

Try to find out what the noise frequency does correlate to. With and without 4WD, vehicle speed, can you make it go away by doing something? - need more data.

Noise is very evident at idle speed. It does seem to increase in repitition to an increase in rpm's, however, it does not seem to be a 1:1 relationship if that makes sense. Almost like it is fluttering to the beat of its own drum. Noise not as noticable when driving but might just be b/c of other road noises. I've noticed all this since its been in standard two wheel drive, but that is a good point, I had it in 4 wheel drive when I drove it rough weather conditions last week, and then put it back to 2wheel drive just before I parked it for 3 days (temp. between 10-30degrees). Noticed all this after driving it again in 2 wheel drive after the 3 day lay off. I hope that helps, thank you.

See if there is something interfering with the fan shroud. Check your fan belts for wear, tension. See if you can locate the noise better with the hood up and the engine idling.

Missed part where it said radiator was empty which is something you can't leave out when thinking of problems cause......Did you have just water in your radiator?Sounds like block may have frozen and cracked...does it leak water out now?you loosing water?where is it going or where did it go I would ask...if water got into a cylinder after it thawed out,it could have bent a connecting rod when engine was started(water won't compress like air)...frozen blocks can cause all sorts of weird problems..

Check oil for water contamination as well(look at bottom of inside of oil filler cap too )

Oh yeah and driving it while overheating could easily have blown headgasgets and damaged engine causing rod/wristpin knock...goodluck

Last oil change 3000 miles ago, was when the radiator coolant level was checked. Might have been due for a flush, but defenitaly was filled with antifreeze mixture not water before all this happened. I've haven't noticed the engine temp. getting hot before all this happened, nor did I see any visible leaks. Just had an oil change, no noticable white residue with the old oil. No noticable leaks after filling the radiatorit back up with coolant and letting it run for 10 minutes. Thanks for the previous input, getting it checked thoroughly tomorrow.

In that case.....hmmmmmmmm lol

Life is not always fair and/or understandable....or easy for that matter.The radiator might have just been topped off with coolant and the rest was water.

Anyways..might be that the clicking started and truck desided to let you know it wanted some water too...or both overheating and clicking are connected.

Does it still have full power,good oil pressure or overheat since you added water??Temp.gauges by nature are designed to sense the temp of water..not steam and do not always read right.Might be that it did damage to headgasgets last time you drove it just before clicking first started it(I have heard what sounded like pre-detonation/timing too far advanced with engine under a load when one cylinder under compression leaks into another next to it...but rare as hell on Toyota's) a simple compression test will tell the tale on headgasgets if need be...

Clicking if not ralated to empty radiator could simply be a lifter colapsed in valvetrain if you still have good oil pressure and still have full power as before...You can use a short section(2-3 foot) of garden hose ,heater hose,3/8 fuel line hose ect.ect.ect. to place to ear and listen around motor til you find where sound is loudest....or place a SMOOTH length of old broom stick handle,long screw driver handle to backside of earlobe against neck and other end to valve cover and engine to find where noise is loudest.

Just listen and locate noise and you might find it to be an idler pulley bearing or water pump bearing and it was just thristy...check it out and let me know.

And check what Brian said as well.He is very knowledgable on Toyota's

The fact that it doesn't correlate well with engine speed has me puzzled. I need to know why not and what it does correlate with.

The fact that it doesn't correlate well with engine speed has me puzzled. I need to know why not and what it does correlate with.


Well we can correlate this with problem maybe....water was never checked til AFTER it overheated...he needs to do the checks in last post short of compression test and answer questions asked in my last post and go from there...gotta cover basics eh..lol

It turned out to be a bad Tensioner Pully. I guess that locked up which started to do some damage to timing belt, that may have affected some bearings which were found in/around the water pump that finally locked up causing complete overheating. $550 later, new tensioner, timing belt, and water pump and I back on the road. I was told I was lucky it didn't get more severe which would have affected the valves. Thanks for everyone's recommendation. I've found this forum to be a nice tool.