Tacoma - OVTUNE - VFTUNER - Update Info and Original Development

Yeah lol, since this IS Tacoma World and he does have a Tacoma.

 

Okay Folks..
Put 700 ish miles on the truck over the weekend. Kept it on 100% stock tune.
Tested off road, 4H, 4L, Crawl, etc

The Initial
The Truck is very easy to drive off road. Very nimble.
To me, 4 high feels ok
To me, 4-Low feels power / throttle restricted
Crawl Control is very easy to use, because you don't have to do anything. Truck drives itself.




The Bad
about 400 miles in..
Truck cannot or will not leave 6th gear.
When it decides to get out of 6th, it gets stuck in 4th. Cruising at 75mph in 4th.
5th gear is a mystery gear that pops up once in a blue moon
6th gear with half / moderate throttle = ZERO acceleration.
Worlds most annoying idle bounce when A/C is on, will rev up to 1k, drop to 500, up to 1k, drop to 500,
Truck will downshift 4th, speed up, shift 6th, cannot accelerate, lose speed, downshift to 4th, for infinity.

Tested highway MPG: 16-17

So I see where all the complaints came from. Next step is run my 1.02C map and develop further. Already see several things I want to change.

I also noticed this. I don't think anyone has mentioned this to me before.

 

The painful lack of low end power on these Tacomas make it need to use 4th gear at 75 on the highway. Try going up hills or driving against a strong wind. It will never leave 4th gear on the highway. Ridiculous.

 

Yup you nailed it. That perfectly sums up the experience I had in my auto over 50k miles of driving.

I had a cumulative average of just over 18 but there were multiple tanks I had in the 13-16 range because it could not hold higher gears and lacked power so you had to wind it up. This was all a stock TRD OR, no lift, tires or armor.

 

Thanks for putting up with stock for the weekend to get a feel for what all the fuss was about to begin with! I agree with you regarding off-road, it’s the one thing I felt the truck kicked ass at on stock tune. Yes in 4lo it seems a bit crazy in some ways. It’s all or nothing in my experience. Barely crawl up a hill or slam it and go too fast for safety so I could see some 4lo adjustments being helpful though I wouldn’t want to put undo stress on the drivetrain...

Good luck refining the tune on your Pro. Nice rig, btw!

 

Now you feel our pain. Glad you could test it yourself and further improve the tune!

 

Has anyone been running the Spec-U exhaust with the latest tune? I dont remember anyone else talking about it since Dylon and he has been on the ban vacation for awhile. I really want to open the exhaust but i dont remember ever hearing great things about the tune and exhaust combo.

 

Yep, that's exactly why I just ordered your tune. I can't wait to receive my tuning kit. I drive a lot of highway miles and this 3rd gen is annoying. My 2ng gen didn't have these issues.

 

Any other observations in datalogs I’m sure you captured? Running 91, I assume? Did you log the random misfires that we commonly experience?

 

.......S Mode lock please
or at least different parameters for the shift

AND, Congrats on the sweet truck, take off the steps.

 

Let me know if you want to part with that Pro hood. I have a Barcelona Red Off Road hood that I could swap with you.

 

Are the steps ugly? They came with the truck. Dealer would not accept removing them and crediting the cost as part of negotiations haha.

Stock S mode is so useless. it will be a big focus for improvement.

I ran out the 87 that it came with, and then 91 the rest on stock tune.

One thing I notice but nothing the logs show to pin point is that the power feels very "surgy." Not sure how to explain it but the truck feels like the power comes in waves

during some off road testing I tested in 2WD and 4H and the truck just feels so natural in 4H (flat ground dirt road)


Something I want to fix asap is the truck shakes at idle.

The hood is the best part


There is still much to be improved

 

Awesome, great to hear your experiences with the new rig. I can of course only speak for my truck but my rough shaky idle ceased with the CKP sensor replacement - your tunes equate to a smoother idle for sure but it should not shake stock.

Glad you experienced the Smode mess. The only thing it is good for is that it isn’t a learning mode (allegedly)

 

Not really ugly but they hang up off-road. 9been wanting S mode lock from the very beginning, it's a joke

 

Yep idle roughness was worse than my 2011 ever was - my truck idles smoother with your tune. 5th and 6th are both very close overdrive gears and both too high to actually accelerate the truck at such low RPM which means it has to drops all the way to 4th than tries to get back to the over drive gears. 5th gear should have been much closer ratio to 4th than to 6th imo.

 

My idle is nice with the tune

 

It’s pretty amazing what May did WITHOUT having a truck around and without having driven one on the street. The real fun begins now.

 

Stock S mode keeps it from shifting up into 5th gear around town. I still use it quite often. There's zero reason this torque-less thing should be in 5th gear at 30 mph.

Power feels very "surgy" with 1.02C also.

Pretty excited that you got the Tacoma so you can really deep dive into it and fix the thing!

 

sweet ride buddy ...thank you for helping our trucks become even more awesome

 

Not sure if anyone else noticed this, but say you are driving in "D", and want to switch to "S" mode, and are in the highway. When moving into "S" mode, the default gear is 4, so the truck downshifts from 5 or 6 down to 4. Is there a way to make the default 5, so the trans maintains its current gear when switched over?