2019 Tacoma OVTune owners

The title says it all basically. Looking for user experience from 2019 Tacoma owners running OVTune. Would you say it’s a beneficial add on and why?

Here’s the reason why I am considering purchasing. My truck shifts weird. It’s not 100% unbearable but I personally think it has room for improvement. I constantly see times where when going from a stop or even just a lower speed and accelerating, the truck shifts to a higher gear too early and without me even changing the position of the throttle, it soon shifts back down a gear and then up again. Sometimes it does it quick sometimes a several second delay but seems as though it should hold a gear a little longer. Also notice that when traveling 55-65 mph and come up into an incline, as I press the throttle further down it still doesn’t downshift. My truck will literally fall from 60 mph to 50-52 mph before it downshifts despite the fact that i increase throttle pressure. Maybe I’m not pressing it hard enough but for all 20+ years of driving my brain tells my foot I’m pressing down enough or else anymore pressure would make it downshifts two gears and rev the engine even higher than required to do the job.

Anyway, I mention all this because I doubt I’ll ever use the performance tune other than just to try it out and experience it myself. I wouldn’t run 93 octane fuel 100% of the time as I can’t justify the $0.70+/gallon just to have extra horsepower when I’m not the type to race up and down the highway. This said, I’m more interested in better drive ability specifically from the weird shift points and the idea of slightly better fuel economy sounds nice as an added bonus.

Anyway, knowing what you know now from using the tune yourself, would you say it’s a worthwhile purchase for those who purchased looking for better shifting and slightly better fuel economy? And would purchasing the tune fix any of the issues I mentioned above? Thanks for reading the more lengthy post but felt it necessary to get my reasoning for wanting to purchase down in readable form

 

@Cav_BluTRD

 

So
I bought OVTune the week I got my third gen. Took 2 weeks to get. I noticed a huge difference right away. Truck shifted way better. Press the gas pedal and it shifts.
Now I will say, it takes some time for the truck to “learn” the tune. So you gotta give it like 2-3 tanks of gas. I run 87 and wouldn’t want to not have the tune.
Further. I think that the other reason why the truck will drop speed is due to the torque converter being crappy. OVTune is working out unfucking what Toyota fucked up.
Also, the tune files get updated every so often so as time goes on it just gets better and better.

And I think it’s on sale right now.

 

I’m no longer worried about price. Used to be and didn’t bode well when even asking about it so I dropped that. The 2700+ thread is an insane amount of skipping through and filtering which comments are relevant to me so figured I’d just ask 2019 specific guys in a separate thread to figure out for myself through their experience.

Thanks for the info, makes sense all that you said.

Last question if you don’t mind though. Purchase handheld or flash? I understand handheld isn’t functioning so would possible be useless forever but not likely. Also ‘think’ it eliminates the need for using a laptop to upload the tune to the truck. Aside from that are there any advantages or disadvantages to having one and not the other if the handheld was operable?

 

2018 here. (I know you specified 2019).
Did my tune today. (87 perf, still had 3/4tank).
Mixed driving, backroads, highway, Boston, and back....
Worth every damn penny just in that 1 trip.
No more confused shifting.....
Will be uploading the 91octane tune after the fill.
I chose the flash kit over the handheld.

 

Thanks for the insight. Curious how some, not just you two guys, say it is instantly noticeable and others who say it takes several tanks to see any change. Partially the reasons I’m so confused and asking outside the thread.

 

My transmission was my biggest gripe. So, I honed in on that.
Also, throttle tip-in is touchy. Responsive.
Im sure it will learn more.

Plan to have the 91 tune on before that though. Shifting and response is better. Im more than happy.

 

Most notice immediate change in driving behavior. That change may ‘settle’ or ‘increase’ a little over the first few tanks. But it’s the truck doing its thing learning fuel trims and whatnot.

My experiences (2018) have been that the change was immediately noticeable. Only once did I ‘go back’. On one of the performance tunes, the throttle was just a bit to trigger-like for me. If it were just me, I might have stayed with it. But my wife is often in the truck and even being careful I sometimes jerked us a bit. Turns out Mat was fixing another concern with that specific tune and I just waited 2 weeks and dropped the new tune.

I hear the 2019s don’t have all the same issues that the prior years had (at least not as bad) but I’m guessing my 2018 with TSB applied should be the same as a 2019 for performance. And still, the tune was well worth it.

 

I went ahead and purchased. Might as well since I’ve been debating it so long and spent so much time reading about it and wondering. Sure hope it’s worth the upgrade and thanks all for chining in with their real life experience.

 

@newdles the tune is definitely worth it! It changes shift points to what we all know they should be. You will also get a small bump up in MPGs. One thing to note though is the 1.5 version caused a “Break Overide Malfunction” error at times on the 19s which was scarry as all hell. The 2.0 Beta (soon to be public final release) has fixed that issue. I’d highly suggest picking up a license to run it on your truck.

 

Thought the flash kit allowed me to use the 2.0 also?

 

I decided to go for it too.

 

It does! But you will have to download it from ovtune website until it’s finalized and available through flash manager (the dedicated software).

 

The handheld was not out when I bought mine. It’s convenient, but you still need a computer. So might as well as just go that route and get the trax adapter he sells

 

It will. If you have any issues there are several people who can walk you through it. Myself included.

 

https://www.ovtuned.com/collections/ovtune-products/products/toyota-tacoma-2grfks-calibration

This is what I purchased. Is this the correct thing that you guys are referring to? Sorry to sound foolish but through a ton of reading this seemed to be right?

 

Yes that’s it.

 

Also, thanks for offering to help. Hoping I can do it without help but through all the reading I’m going to have issues to start being that my truck is brand new and never had a tsb update of any kind. I’ve also read countless issues of the stock ecu numbers aren’t flashable without the tsb performed. Also read about doing it myself through tech steam and have heard horror stories about the difficulty of navigating that program with no experience.

Anyway hoping for good luck if not maybe I can find the answers in that 50 mile long thread. Will definitely watch the install video numerous times as that’s been said to be key also.