Brand new Tacoma owner

Welcome to The forums. A lot of great info to dig through on here.

 

Definitely a lot of information. Thanks man.

 

I'll echo, be slow on "upgrades" - The more you deviate from the original configuration, the more compromises you make in reliability/drivability. Lifts and huge tires look great but take their toll. Adding 1,000 lbs of armor looks cool, but makes the truck even slower.

The closer you can keep it to stock, the better the overall experience tends to be. IMHO, only upgrade things that need to change in order to meet your user requirements.

 

Thank you for the advice sir. Honestly I was hoping to hear just that because I love how the truck rides right now. And honestly I’ll be doing mostly long road trips to colorado utah and to the outer banks. So on road drivability and fuel economy are big on my list of priorities. We will be using an rtt to camp and doing some light off roading. So I’m guessing maybe upgrade tires and possibly little else?

 

Yeap, and when it comes to tires, don't fall into the E-rated/10-ply rated trap. The SL-rated off-road tires are more than adequate for all but the most extreme, low-pressure rock crawling. The OEM tires only weigh 36lbs per tire, E-rated tires can be upwards of 60lbs. All that extra weight takes its toll on mileage, acceleration, braking and suspension.

An SL rated tire still exceeds the weight rating of the Tacoma axle. You don't need C, D, E rated tires.

 

Thanks for that. What do these ratings mean? Or if it’s to much to go into here if you can point me to thread or web page I’ll read up on this stuff.

 

The ratings are basically a weight rating. More accurately, how much tire pressure the tire can hold. An E-rated tire, typically can handle 80psi, because it's the air that holds up weight. So if you have an F350 and you haul concrete blocks all day, you need to be able to support all that weight, and you need a lot of air to do that.

The number after the letter is the weight in KG. So, the OEM tires on your truck are SL 112, so it's rated to 1120kgs, or 2469 lbs at a max tire pressure of 41psi. An E-rated tire E 121, 1210 kgs, or 3195 lbs at 80psi max.

A Tacoma only has a 900lb payload capacity, and the tire pressure, marked in your drivers door sill is, like, 30psi. Now, confusingly, if you have an E-rated tire, and you run it at 30psi, the weight rating for that tire actually goes way down, and may actually be lower than the payload capicity of your truck. If you fit an E-rated tire and run the recommened pressure, your truck will ride like a buckboard and you will rattle your fillings out.

A lot of guys who do hard-core rock crawling swear by running E-rated tires because they'll air them down to 10-12 psi and the argument is the nature of the construction of the tire, it's a little less likely to cut the sidewall. The other problem is that all the really cool looking AT and MT tires tend to only come in E-ratings. So a lot of people who basically don't care, run the chunky E-rated tire simply because it looks really cool.

However, you can still get some decent looking SL rated AT tires that weigh around 40lbs, so you don't really compromise the handling of the truck very much, and you still get a good looking tire.

thats a lot of tire information

 

Suggest to spend an evening reading through the Owner's Manual.

It will have details on all the controls and how to operate along with maintenance and driving tips.

 

Thanks man I appreciate the information. I’ll definitely be sticking with a good all terrain that will work with a stock configuration. No rock crawling for me.

 

Thanks I definitely will. I did a little last night and man is there a lot of info there.

 

Thanks!

 

Welcome!

 

Thank you!