4.10, 4.30, or 4.56 for supercharger

Hello, i just supercharged the taco.....5VZ and wanted to see what ratios others are running with.

I have 5 spd manual and currently running 4.88s on it and i HATE the mpg's, especially for highway. I also run 285s as well. RPM is about 3100 at 70.....EESH. I also have all-pro tube bumper with m8000 winch on front.

I tow a boat weighing about 1200lbs with gear that is less then 500lbs (I HOPE, lol).

My goal is to achieve decent mileage on highway, for those long fishing trips. With the addition of the charger, would going down be better or leave it?

thank you.

 

Lowering your gear ratio is unlikely to improve your MPGs. In fact, you might find the opposite happens.

My own experience is, going to to 4.88s with 33s allowed the engine to run easier, with a lower load. One benefit of that was better MPGs.

 

If you get the math right (tires and gears both count to calculate the final gear ratio), correct your speedo/odo so you can properly calculate the MPG, you can about equal OE performance.

OTOH, an SC and it's premium fuel is gonna negate any wallet savings anyway, so don't worry about it.

 

What's the stock gear ratio on the first gens, 4.10? I think that's it for the TRD axle. At any rate, the supercharger should have no influence on your MPG if you drive normally.

I'm supercharged too, but have stock tires and stock gear ratio. I average 20mpg on the highway, driving conservatively at 65-70mph. I'm not familiar with re-gearing at all but what if you went back to the stock gear ratio?

Doing that and going to closer to stock size with your tires is probably the 'best' option, though likely not the most practical one especially if you're lifted.

 

Are you on stock size tires? 31s? Larger tires make a huge difference in MPG loss. And stock gears with 33s suck.

 

I'm all stock tires and gears, my mpg is pretty good...actually it's better than the original EPA estimates for my truck. But I was thinking that the OP might want to go back to stock gears and smaller tires if his MPG is really bad, but the cost of doing so might not justify it.

 

I've got a supercharger on my 2002 Double cab 2.7 4 cylinder Tacoma . It's running stock gearing which is 4.56's but with 265/75 - 16 tires it would probably run better with 4.88's

I live in the mtns with a 4500' mtn pass and other mtn roads the go up to 10k ft elev and my truck even with the supercharger still struggles some on these roads keeping the speed up and why possibly swapping to 4.88's

 

how "terrible" is your current MPG?

 

Thanks for all that chimed in.

Well i have corrected the speedo with a yellowbox (<<< freakin awesome knowing the correct speed is on the speedo, for a while i was running without it). Speed is also confirmed by GPS.

Yeah, i understand that with lift, big tires, heavy winch/bumper is gonna kill gas mileage, aint no way around it and i have embraced "the suck" (as we called it in the Marines).......but man i didn't think it would be THIS bad. For example towing boat to a local lake and back, round trip of about 8 miles and I can literally watch the gas meter drop.

I'll have to redo the math and get back with a more accurate number. I've added a few minor things along with the addition of the charger.

I'll be back with the result after some testing with and without boat.

I have a feeling 4.30 or 4.56 is the way to go, but we'll see that these upcoming results are.

Stay tuned, for the next episode of..................

 

Did you ever get anywhere with this @El Taco ? I'm interested in hearing more about your experience as I find myself feeling similarly with my Tacoma....