Tacoma hesitation

[gandalf]

I'm in Maine now, and have been driving my daughter's Toyota Tacoma. It's a '99 model, with a 3.4 liter engine.

When you start it you have to give it a bit of throttle or it dies. Just a bit of throttle and its fine. After that the idle if fine. When I'm driving, already moving, and give it gas, I can feel it hesitate, bog down, before it starts to accelerate.

One person has told them it's an O2 sensor. Could this be the problem, or might it be something simpler, like a clogged fuel filter? My vote is to go with the fuel filter since it's cheaper, and we're pretty much guessing anyway.

Opinions welcome.

 

[gandalf]

Lost my place, and posted in the wrong forum. Mods, please move to the proper forum. Thanks.

 

[sle2115]

I would also check to see if it has a IAC (Idle Air Control) on it and have a look at it. Most of them have a pintle/seat assembly and they often get carbon from EGR processes or the motor that moves the pintle dies. I've not experienced this a lot on Toyota's, but other makes do have issues with them quite regularly. I don't see an O2 sensor causing it, but again, we worked on very few Toyota's, they just seemed to run forever with few problems, short of a V6 that seemed to like to blow head gaskets (I believe it was a 3.0 but it's been a few years ago) and the dealership brought all their heads to the machine shop to be surfaced.