Tacoma Tow Poll - have you ever used your Tacoma to Tow?

I tow quite often with my truck. I have a 7x14 enclosed trailer that is 2000lbs dry. I tow customer cars around town at about 4000lbs total with open trailer. Most I have towed is a 92 F150 EXT cab long bed 4x4 on a steel open trailer up a long grade from Palm Springs up to the high desert.

 

I pull this all summer long! Sometimes I forget it's even behind me

 

Even though the published tongue capacity is 650 lbs, my experience is there is too much sag on the rear and lift in the front if you get anywhere close to that, probably even with 300+ lbs. That is not safe handling and braking so get a weight distribution hitch to balance it right back out.

300 lbs on the hitch is equivalent to a much bigger load placed in the bed due to the longer leverage at the hitch.

 

If you tow a lot you might want to check into towing in drive rather than in OD. I tow quite a bit with my Tundra and Toyota bought me a new tranny at 35k. Took out overdive! Though they don't say much in the manual, the OD gear is not really designed for towing heavy loads and will fail if used a lot. Turns out that I actually got better mileage by about 1mpg towing in drive than I did towing in OD! This is going from California to Moab on highway 80 so a long trip, and towing an FJ 40 on a Carson Trailer so about a 6k load. On the Tundra you simply push a button to lock out OD, I believe on the Tacos you have to select 4th gear to lock out OD. Seems many other mfgs state not to tow inh OD, but for some reason Toyota didn't back in 02 when the truck was built.

 

Out of curiousity, what kind of weight were you towing up until that 35K?

 

That goes for any vehicle. Any time I'm towing, I've been taught to switch overdrive off on Auto transmission. Of course I live where hills are a prominent and constant features of any highway drive.

 

^^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=DyF0tR6cQA4