My 05 Taco

I have an 05 4 door prerunner. I drive the truck constantly and put a new suspension in it about 35,000 ago (about one year of driving) Really happy with the 5100's and eibachs and my AAL airbag setup. The truck probaby has 500-1000 pounds of gear and tools in it every day and I avergage probably 18-20 mpg with my mixed driving. Kenwood stereo, All new door speakers and ********* 10" Sub behind the rear seat

Just Drove it across the country twice, and all over both coasts towing a 20 foot sailboat and averages between 13-18 mpg on the hwy. Almost completely dependent on windage.

A couple things that seem a bit different on this truck from my old 01 prerunner.

The exhaust looks like its a diesel. Probably even dirtier than my diesel truck. Whats up with that? Apparently its common on these trucks? My 3.4 always stayed extremely clean.

Transmission seems to get way too hot while towing, even with my factory tow package cooler. I can probably brew tea in my cup holder on long road trips when towing. Had the fluid changed about 5000 miles ago and it looked like chocolate syrup apparently.

Yesterday my thermostat got stuck while towing a boat in the Califormia central valley. Wasn't a problem until I pulled into a gas station and promptly red lined the temp guage. Scanguage said I got to 249. Luckily I decided to stomp on it in hopes of getting the fan to pull more air through, and it worked, temp came back down before roasting my motor. Found the higher rpm was beneficial due to the increased water pressure, and not the increased air flow. Figured that out when I almost red lined coasting down a grade in neutral and watching the temp guage climb almost to red before slamming it back into 4 at 3k rpm and watching it drop back to 190. New thermostat today. Fixed the issue.

Future of the truck?
Want to figure out why it looks like I am rolling coal out my exhaust. Maybe a ram air intake to lean out the mixture a bit?
New 17 inch rims and 265 70 17 to fill up my wheel wells.
Lower the gearing? Seems like 2000 rpm at 70 is way to low for these trucks, especially when I tow 15-20k a year and am planning on bigger wheels.
bigger transmission cooler
Was considering a used supercharger to help with the towing but it hardly seems worth it on a truck that is pushing 200k, and needs to go at least 100k more
backup camera possibly (hard to see with the camper shell always full of gear)

Standby for photos

 

Photos

 

No input, but does your tranny slip in day to day driving? Sounds like you're rough on her.

 

Tranny is solid. She gets alot of money dumped into preventative maintenance every year, that being said, she does get used hard and is a work truck. She definitely is used to factory capacity limits on a regular basis. This whole overheating debacle is the first time I really have been concerned about the truck not finishing a trip.