Extremely interesting interview with Mike Sweers.

So you can go five hours without peeing? I can too if I don't drink anything but after five hours you gotta stop.

 

I get about 390 miles in 4WD until the light comes on. I’m running C-rated 265/70/17 Ko2 and a 1.5” lift and a TRD aluminum skid plate. Topper on back, steel rear bumper. No sliders / no extra skids.

 

You must drive like grandma.

 

We were talking range. I really don’t care about MPG, but it do care about range.

 

I do.

Is there a chance your light comes on early? You say 16 gallons until the light comes on in a 21 gallon tank. By my math that would put my truck at 24mpg, which even with my grandma driving, there is no way I’m getting.

 

i was also talking about range. I was trying to get your MPG to justify that awful 300 miles to a tank

I'm 99.9 % sure my light comes on and it says 15 miles to empty

 

MPGs determine your range. Easy on the pedal and you could get 400 instead of a 300 mile range.

 

I gotta do the km conversion. But Mutely says he gets 50 more miles until empty. If his light comes on at 16 gallons, with a 21 gallon tank, he should have about 100 miles left at 19MPG, which is way more than 15 miles left.

Something is not adding up here. Now I’m confused.

 

I’m calling bullshit on efficiency. While I didn’t own a 2nd gen I owned a 03 taco, an 11 frontier and a 13 f150. My Tacoma didn’t fare much better than the other mid sized trucks I had, and get about what I did with my F150. And compared to how I drive the others I drive my 3rd gen like an 80 year old grandma going to church Sunday morning. Using cruise most of the time driving to work, which I never did in any other of my vehicles. Personally I feel like the MPG sucks. Thankfully having owned a few bettertrucks I wasn’t expecting much in that department but was expecting a few more MPG better than what my larger, heavier F150 was getting. It’s a disappointment.

Anyway back on topic here, I can’t believe it’s that much more efficient than a second gen. But then again 10% would only be around 1-2 mpg anyway so I guess that is probably true. However I think most of us buyers would rather have some power and low end torque vs a 1-1.5 mpg difference. I know I would.

 

All my Tacoma’s have had the fuel light come on around 18 gallons. Something is way off for his to come on at 15 gallons.

 

yea you can't really have one without the other, hence why i was trying to see what his MPG was to see why he was getting 300 miles to a tank. Maybe Mutely has a lift and larger tires ???

 

So maybe the whole thing is in @mutely ’s mind due to an improperly calibrated fuel sender.

 

Very few buyers would rather have that, and they all are members of TW. I wrote an article about the actual efficiency of engines and how just a percent or two of efficiency is a big deal.
Just remember they built exactly what a majority of their customers wanted, and are rewarded with 250K of sales every year.

People don't buy what they don't want, and efficiency is what they want. It's a bit more complex, because you got to get the looks, options, interior, towing, power and everything else they want and STILL be able to get better mpg than the last model.

 

Pretty much agree.
I'm getting an overall average of 19mpg over about a year and a half of logging it; local stop n go, highway sometimes at 80mph but always trying to be mpg conscious. When I fill up DTE usually shows 400-425 miles, obviously terrain dictates that.

As far as the gear ratios, yeah they're fucked. It's blatantly obvious when you're on a highway with the slightest changes in grade and the thing ends up in a feedback loop where it'll shift to overdrive and immediately lose power to sustain the target speed then downshift & repeat; cruise control makes it more apparent. Add to that a sealed transmission and I wonder if it'll last as long as the old tacos.

 

I felt Mike explained this challenge for Toyota very well in the posted video.

They obviously got the balance very right as they can’t make enough of these trucks.

 

The 2nd Gen Tacomas didn’t have a tranny dipstick either, as do no other modern cars I can think of.

 

Did you not read any of the posts?

 

In almost 40 years of owning cars I never owned one with a Transmission Dipstick, but then again they have all been Manuals.

 

And you are unhappy with these numbers? Jeez.....a lot of guys are hoping for 16MPG. I’m stoked I can drive around 400 miles off highway. That’s 200 miles into the bush and back without needing extra fuel. There’s not many places left in North America where you can even do that.

 

The auto makers realized auto Transmission dipsticks caused far more issues than they solved. They had to have multiple “notches” for different temperatures (hot/cold), and then you had to either have the transmission running or not running, hot or cold, depending on the make and model. Most people just ain’t bright enough to figure those things out. Then if you wanted to add fluid there was no filler tube anyways. People ended up pouring tranny fluid down the dipstick tube, because they read the level wrong. Others poured the tranny fluid in the engine oil filler tube and kept waiting for the level to come up. Then ran their engine with tranny fluid in the oil pan.

It was mostly a disaster, so the AT dipstick went away and the method changed to the same way as those good old manual transmissions, with a fill plug, albeit a slightly more complex filling procedure due to temperature/volume variations inherent to AT tranny design.