I FINALLY "Fixed" My Tacoma, OV Tune Review

I just installed the OV Tune on my truck. What a difference. I've driven nothing buy manuals since my early twenties and that was the biggest reason I bought the Tacoma instead of the Nissan Frontier. I've loved my truck since the day I got it, but I've had severe gripes since day one about the drivability of the darn thing. Basically, I had no fine control over the truck, both through the clutch and through the throttle. The lagging clutch response was fixed with the accumulator delete several months ago and went a long way to making this truck more enjoyable to drive, but the engine response was still subpar. With the stock tune, it seemed like Toyota had already determined how you should drive the truck, and it was extremely optimized to operate within this narrow envelope ... dare to venture outside of this and the truck would behave strangely and inconsistently. I suppose it's OK for one who doesn't feel the need to be "connected" to the car, but not for me--that's why I bought a manual for crying out loud. With the OV Tune, it really feels much more like a conventional throttle-by-cable design; the engine responds consistently and organically to throttle inputs. Given the high price tag, time will tell if it was worth the money I put into it, but I sure am happy to have it at this moment.

 

Yeah! The tune does great things to reveal the excellent hardware that we have.

 

Organically?

 

OP, did you do the tune or have someone do it for you? As soon as I am out of factory warranty (yeah I know they can't see the tune), I am going to do it as well.

 

This is a really well constructed way illuminating the shortcomings of the stock calibration. Unfortunately it seems a lot of things are going this way. I operate newer cranes and they’re all moving towards frequency driven controls. It kills the feedback and makes for inconsistent frustrating days, exactly like the inconsistent stock tune on the taco. Don’t get me wrong. I know why they do it, but it’s enough to drive ya mad!

 

Hehe, I guess what I meant is that the experience was organic ... like the truck is an extension of your own body

I did it myself. I was in the same boat as you for the longest time, not wanting to void my warranty. After more research, it sounds like 1.) they're not checking for tunes (I'm not sure they even CAN) and 2.) it was so easy and quick to install that I can easily flash it back to stock before taking it in for routine service.

Frequency-driven controls eh? Never heard of such a thing, but I'll look into it. I've had the pleasure of operating many "By wire" machines in my career, but they've all been well-designed and behave naturally and consistently. I'm not opposed to drive-by-wire systems; I'm merely opposed to the school-trained engineers who have probably never driven a manual car and design overly-restrictive systems (I'm a "school-trained" engineer, for what it's worth). I guess not many of the engineers designing your cranes have actually spent considerable time operating one..

 

Yeah they’re getting rid of contractors for frequency drives. Which isn’t necessarily bad. But no one wants to spend the time fine tuning them for the right ramp up ramp down etcetc. More often than not, they take options away instead of giving us all the options and letting us decide which one is right in any given scenario. They can make for some long days haha.

 

How exactly does one get setup to do this themselves? License fee and some basic training? Do you mind sharing the cost, even via PM if more appropriate?

 

what tune file did you install exactly? what calibration are you on? welcome to the fold.

 

PM'd

(04C30) Regular OL. It's the only one I've tried thus far. I haven't found any explanation of what the different tune files are--I'm sure I can find more on this on the OV Tune forums.


I'll be posting a more detailed review of my specific observations regarding the OV Tune on a more relevant, pre-existing thread. I just wanted to start this one so that anyone doing a google search could find a simple, quick to read thread pointing them to what I think are two absolutely essential mods: Accumulator Delete and OV Tune.

 

that's a good starting point. when you get to the more developed MT tune files, you'll be surprised how much better they are. the MT trucks can really enjoy this motor's quirky performance. good luck with everything.

 

The general descriptions are in this post:
https://vftuner.com/blogs/news/toyo...0-manual-transmission-2020-model-year-support

You'll be an SFOB fan before you know it.

 

oh man. If you like the OL tune you will really like the custom tunes such as Nexus by @Mooseditty17 or KDMAX by @PapaRee. These are among the top two I have tested out of 4 years and 25+ tunes.

These are way ahead in terms of refinement than the standard OVtune OL tune

 

I worked with a guy local to me (Raleigh, NC) and based on his feedback, I had him flash the ECU with the OVTune over the KDMAX tune. He had both available, but he ran OVTune himself, so I figured I'd give that a go first.

While I can't say I know what the KDMAX tune is like, the OVTune is amazing. I didn't realize how much lag was in the throttle until after the tune. I'd recommend it without a doubt. In fact, I just recommended it to my friend today before seeing this post.

 

Huh? I can add custom tunes?! This is news to me. Where do I find these?

 

you buy them and install them (or have them installed) by known tuners. The names I mentioned are reliable sources

 

...and then when you get further down this vFtuner rabbit hole, you can modify those OVtune files to your liking, since they are editable

 

Premium SFOB on 93 is amazing!

 

I need to get into that… I know nothing about editing tunes.

 

WOAH. I'm blown away. I just read up on the SFOB and realized "sFOb" was "Full Otto"--I immediately flashed my truck with the lower octane version of this. I don't even have words..y'all've literally saved my truck from its previous miserable existence. I let it idle a few minutes and went for a test ride; I was going to stop at a local bar for a drink or two but didn't want to stop driving. Throttle control has been COMPLETELY fixed. I can easily heel-toe now in all situations through all gears, engine braking seems to be improved, the throttle no longer hesitates for a second after each shift followed by a surge as rpms climb above some arbitrary value--just a smooth steady ramp-up of torque. I had enough throttle control to quickly float it into 1st at 25 mph (I don't make a habit of this...I just wanted to know if I could).

The idea of custom tunes sounds really neat, but with this being my daily driver, I think I'll just stick with what I've got now. It's everything I was looking for.