Tacoma - OVTUNE - VFTUNER - Update Info and Original Development

Im more wanting to do it so it is under the current warranty and Toyota can see they did the update if there were ever an issue. Got it all cleared up. Good to go

 

I would let Mat speak for himself, but he has been somewhat elusive on the TSB vs. 1.05 piece. And we haven't yet seen a pre-TSB release of the tune as I recall. The TSB fundamentally rewrites SO much of the code in our ECU calibrations - far reaching beyond what Mat modifies as part of his tune. While he may have a way to fully port over ALL of the seed code from the TSB into 1.05, this has not yet been demonstrated.

I would want to have the latest Toyota calibration on my truck. Period. Plus you can't really compare the quality of a tune to stock if you don't have the best attempt at a stock tune.

My suspicion is that the reason Mat walked back his comments on getting the TSB is because people kept screwing up their ECU doing it themselves and he knows getting it done at the dealer has been a pain for many folks. I do believe he's trying to make it fully compatible, and wants to make the entire process as painless as possible for all.

The TSB is exponentially better than prior 16-17 AT calibrations. So much so that me, a guy who couldn't STAND the stock calibration and begged for a tune last summer, has actually run no tune - only the TSB for most of my last 7k miles. Sure, not as much giddy-up as tuned, but it does have better pull than pre-TSB/no tune especially off the line.

1.04 was a pretty good tune. My only real complaint with it was that it didn't handle mountains very well and the torque converter locking wasn't reasonable when you are, say climbing a long grade on a 55 mph road when 4th would do the job. 95% of the time this wasn't an issue and I was very happy.

If you don't want to get the TSB, I'd stay on 1.04 - I don't feel 1.04r adds much, and in fact, I think the shifting changes in the TSB actually hindered the performance in 1.04r and I found the throttle to flare a bit, and be inconsistent - but he was doing a big favor to quickly turn around a version post-TSB to ensure tuned customers were getting benefit (power!) while he worked on the final 1.05 updates. All reasons I'm thankful Mat is taking the time to nail 1.05 - there's still a lot of potential on the table and Toyota did help us all out by finally figuring out how to calibrate these trucks (for the most part).

 

Not sure a torque converter slipping for miles with huge load up a mountain is going to be the best option in that scenario... sounds toasty.

TSB is lovely though!

 

I agree, the latest TSB really smoothed out the trans and idle but I do miss that 1.03 tip in with 33 inch tires and altitude. It still drops down to 4th all the time but is much smoother when it does it.

 

True story - don't want that damn thing heating up the entire time, but in the drive I'm referring to here, there were a couple of steeper points in the grade where it hit 3rd and when the grade evened out some it would NOT shift back to 4th no matter what. Same drive on the TSB and you can feel it slip when it hits the same grades to get a bit more power without downshifting.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write all this down for us. Nicely explained and grammatically comprehensible.

Frank

 

My 2 cents: I purchased my truck in May, 2018 and I live at 6,000 feet. Since reading about the TSB on this forum, and in the pdf someone kindly posted a few hundred pages back (!), I've floored it a dozen times, warm and cold, from a stop and at low speeds, and I've never experienced a stumble. There's nothing elegant about the shifting but it pulls steadily. For whatever reason, perhaps some trucks just don't have this particular problem. Mat said if you're not experiencing the problem, you don't need the TSB, so I'll just wait for 1.05.

I don't have any previous tune, by the way, just stock.

 

Lot of my thoughts in there.

Indeed if there is a new release from Toyota, I'd like to see there also be an upgrade path freeze. Mat will forever be stuck incorporating the new updates and we will truly never see 1.05. By upgrade path freeze, I mean if there is a 04b14, upgrading to 1.05 won't be supported until all prior versions are supported.

 

I flashed 1.04R immediately after 04B04 TSB, so I can't speak for the TSB, but I do love 1.04R, mostly.

1.04R definitely "evolve" over time. Engine power and shifting become smoother after few hundred miles. Unfortunately, after few thousand miles, the transmission shift dance came back, and ever so slightly power loss. Whoever say learning is completely disabled on 1.04R, it may be so, but something changed after few thousand miles that make the truck "relearned" some of its old habits, no where close to as bad as it was stock (pre-TSB), but it evolved nonetheless.

I cleared DTC via Techstream, after few hundred miles, the truck is driving superb again, hopefully I don't have to wait few more thousand miles before 1.05 drop, or I'll have to clear DTC again. And I hope this "learning" is not present in 1.05.

 

You're probably right on that - I never gave 1.04r more than 50 miles before I flashed back to B04 TSB so I likely didn't ever reach the stabilization point you've experienced!

 

ok, just drove home after TSB to most recent version. Impressions:

• Smooth shifting and less throttle needed to downshift - kinda like a very partial ECT.
• Even with all my weight and bigger tires it drives with "giddyup"
• Cruising at 67mph, 1600rpms, 25-30mpg
• Glad I did it, just feels better

going to drive plain TSB before 1.04r for a bit to really get an accurate feel

 

The way I read it, Mat had to build his tune around Toyota's changes midstream causing the postponed delivery date of 1.05.

This all works out in our favor (of course) as we will get Toyota's latest version tweaked by the Maestro and then some !

Hence, NO TSB if you have the patience to wait for the release of 1.05

 

It is apparently perfectly ok with Toyota for an individual to subscribe to Techstream and do the TSB on their own truck. So I would hope/wish that Mat would update the Calibration ID to read 04B04, no matter which calibration version you were prior to v1.05

 

Whats new? Havent seen any posts on 1.05. @OVTune whats the latest juicy details

 

Time to buy a BMW or Mazda...

 

Maybe its time to stop putting money in the taco and save up for a big ass downpayment on a hellcat or ZL1 1LE... before anyone brings up reliability. You dont buy a sports car for reliability!

 

and you don't buy a Taco to go fast

 

From 1.05 being hours away from release on Oct 31 to now being a couple weeks to possibly a month or more wait I'm kinda feeling like that one crybaby just killed a little bit of Matt's spirit and he's taking a little bit of a breather from the Tacoma tune to concentrate on other platforms. i may be wrong but the gut tells me otherwise. Oh well, time to undo the negative cable on the battery for a memory reset for both the truck and me. It'll be here eventually

 

I think I’m going to do what @bshammer0 has been doing and just flash back to factory B04 till when ever 1.05 is finally released.

 

Don't know what happened.

He asked for a final batch of testers and all of a sudden the release gets pulled. So, either there is some horrible edge case somebody ran into that they can't talk about or...maybe Toyota decided they don't like ovtune and is intentionally putting out slightly varying TSBs to confuse the upgrade path.