Did the Nitro 5.29 Gear Swap with 285’s, Now What? OV Tune?

I have a 2020 Tacoma with the following adding weight and resistance:

• Diamondback cover
• Victory full front bumper
  
• Come up 9500 winch
• Victory roof rack with maxtrax
• 2 light bars and ditch lights
• OME BP-51’s and Dakar medium leafs
• RCI rock sliders
• 285/75r16 bfg KO2’s E rated on SCS Ray 10’s.

Installed Nitro 5.29’s hoping to fix the shifting issues. I’m at 2k rpms at 60 mph and I find it does find 6th gear easier. Mpg’s are roughly the same. Which is fine with me. I just want it to stop shifting down to 4th at highway speeds and revving up like crazy when even the slightest hill presents itself. Cruise control is also useless, because it wants to shift down to 4th (bypassing 5th) and get hung up there for way too long before it wants to up shift back into one of the OD gears.

Is my only option at this point the OV tune? Is it worth it? I’m at the point where:

• I say fuck it, it is what it is
• Throw more money at it with the OV tune
• Sell the damn thing and cut my losses.

I love the looks of the truck, the size of it for daily driving, Offroad capability, aftermarket support, community, etc. I just would like to resolve the erratic shifting and high revving on the highway.

 

Don't be shy with 4th gear. It is the 1.00 ratio. These engines like the higher revs anyways. Try disconnecting your battery for a bit to re learn your driving. After that try ECT more often. Maybe try the sequence shift and let it hangout in 5th and leave 6th for 70+.

All of these are free. Then look at the ov thread while you're trying these free changes and see if it'll help you (it should)

 

Ovtune with the 5.29 and 33" option keeps me in 6th or 5th on all but the most gnarly hills.

 

What speeds are you running on the hwy and which cruise option are you using?

 

appreciate the info. Revving up to 4K+ on the hills and holding that is alright? I come from nothing but full size domestic trucks and this is new to me. I’ll try the ECT and see what that does as well. As far as sequence shift, I’m guessing you mean where I “manually” put it in 5th and shift to 6th on the flat ground? Thanks again.

 

65-70. And I’m not sure what you mean by which cruise option? It’s the variable cruise and I usually set it around 65-70.

 

If you hold the button down instead of just tap it, it'll let you use an old school static speed cruise.

 

hmm.. learned something new. Thanks.

 

The 3.5L loves the high RPM. Check out the ovtune thread it discusses it. Yeah it is a shift limiter. The trans ratio on the AT has 2 over drive gears, I believe the final is .58 (6th gear) so maybe try that and see if it helps a little. I know OV has gotten the 529 beta out not sure if the final is out yet.

 

A couple tips:
Use the standard cruise option by holding down the cruise on/off button. It will shift much more predictability and not hold gears nearly as long.
Always select S mode instead of drive. This will use the standard shift logic instead of the "learned" shift patterns.
If the truck wants to be in 4th, let it. That's where most of the power is made is doesn't hurt the slightest.
If you want the truck to down shift sooner when cresting a hill and using cruise control, tap the accelerator pedal and it will down shift.

 

Yeah you need the tune.

 

Dont use cruise control and expect it not to downshift, tip #1

 

I don't mind the downshifting. It's the getting hung up in the gear way longer than necessary that is the issue.

 

I think it's the high revs that are getting me. I'm used to V8's that don't have 2 OD gears and the shifting/revving is a lot different on them. It sounds like I am really romping on it (as if I were going to try to pass someone on the highway) when I'm just trying to maintain highway speeds in that 65-70 range. I only saw these high revs in my previous trucks when really getting on it (which was rare).

 

Peak torque is @ 4600 RPM and peak HP is @ 6000 RPM.

It's gonna shift a lot.

The hanging high RPM kills me as well so I don't use cruise much. Using your foot to moderate the speed does away with the multi gear drop and hanging RPM. My truck shifts absolutely normal on S5 and using my foot. Like it hardly downshifts at all on the highway except for obvious situations of course. Your truck regeared probably would never shift in the same scenario.

 

Don’t use the cruise control and you can pick the gear with your foot.

 

I'm with ya. I just don't use the cruise. Although I would like to in certain situations, I find it unusable altogether. About to go on a 2k mile round trip and having the cruise would be nice.

 

That's where I'm at currently. But setting the cruise is nice on long stretches of highway. Especially with the variable speed function since there will be a few of us following each other on this upcoming trip. On a daily, I don't use cruise, so why it is a "problem" it's one that is not experienced often.

 

Yeah I feel. I personally just turn cruise on when I know it won’t shift.

I have 5.29s and a heavier build and I’m happy. Maybe OVTune is what you need

 

Might just do that, throw it on cruise when i know it's going to be flat, take over with my foot when it's not. Guessing you're not running any kind of tune, just the 5.29's?