good job with that pipe, its always bad:p
and yeah the intake manifold always gets dirty. its from that PCV pipe venting back into the intake. you'd want to do some sort of home brew catch can to eliminate that, but its not necessary if you don't mind cleaning that stuff every year or two.
you can check all the vacuum tubes, a leak might cause this but i'd imagine it would cause a low/unstable idle. either way its easy to replace that stuff, just get a bunch of tubing from any auto parts store and replace one by one to avoid confusing them. cut the tubing with just a regular pair of scissors. beyond that yeah its time to recalibrate that TPS...sounds like the last guy might have messed with it anyhow.
as for that carrier bearing its not a terrbily hard job but i don't know if you'd want to do it in the winter (i'm up in canada so i understand
. you'd have to remove that propeller shaft and press the old bearing off and the new one on. other than that its pretty straght forward just watch your torque specs. the part isn't cheap though, over $100. i recommend
www.1sttoyotaparts.com from my past experience. great prices and they're great to deal with. if you cant find the part on their web cataloge just call them, it doesn't list everything.
