To tune, or not to tune? That is the question. Manual transmission.

To tune! That is the answer. I just had the kdmax 9.0 installed on my 18 dcsb manual trans and, yes! It is 100% necessary. It didn’t smooth out the power delivery on hard acceleration as much as I had hoped for so it still keeps some of the Tacoma’s, rough, quirkiness and “Tacoma character”. It was somewhat improved but not entirely. Most importantly, It takes some of the power and moves it lower in the rev range somehow. That 4k rpm boost you get is moved down to 2500rpm where it is much more usable. The throttle resembles every other car now and no longer feels like I’m trying to squish a brick when moving from a stop. Throttle response is improved everywhere. I think the first thing most people will think is that the truck feels much lighter due to the increased throttle response and acceleration.
Pre-tune, I was considering if I can even live with this truck since I bought it in December. It’s so slow and the clutch is so inconsistent. Don’t get me wrong the transmission is great the clutch is not. If the clutch accumulator delete does what people say, this truck will be perfect (minus the short bed, lol).
I could not find much about how the tune is on a manual. It’s obvious the automatic benefits from it but I am here to tell you the the manual trans benefits greatly from a tune. What are you waiting for?!

 

Clutch accumulator delete and tune is the way to go …. If your running 285/70/17 tires, that puts some extreme wear on the clutch and will most likely need a premature clutch replacement

 

Thanks for the advice. I keep hearing the same thing so accum delete will be on the top of things to get done in the spring! Im on stock tires 250 70 16 so clutch should be an issue.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the tune has to learn your driving habits. Give it time.

 

Good point!

 

Had mine re tuned to the Overland Tailor Tune a few weeks ago and it was apparent from the moment my foot pressed on the gas that I needed to have less of a lead foot. I had the first KDMax tune done too but this is a step up! It holds the gear for longer and I find myself suddenly going 75 or 80mph.

Beat that ya Camrys!

 

Tuned/ADM but otherwise stock 2018 6MT here. kdmax 9.0 + ADM is the way to go.

 

[sigh]....you all are going to spend all of my money...

On a different note....(insert shameless plug for the @Firn's Accumulator Delete Disk available on ebay)

 

I'm still on stock tune. Wouldn't mind getting a tune at some point, but it hasn't been worth my time/money to sift through the options.

From what I've seen the MT tune options are a bit lackluster. If I remember right, the kdmax tuners didn't even have access to a MT truck. Maybe that's changed or doesn't matter, but it certainly gives me pause.

 

KDmax tune didn’t impress me, barely different than stock. If I lived closer to the tuner I would’ve gone back and tried different things but it wasn’t worth the 3 hour round trip for me. All said I probably wouldn’t bother with a tune again.

 

Not sure what planet you had your tune installed but mine is night and day. Medium throttle, fuel learning map. Maybe call up your tuner.

 

How does it move the 4k "power boost" to 2500? Isn't that a hardware characteristic of the engine, vs a software tune?

 

The stock characteristics are purely the result of the crappy stock tune. There are humps at 1,400rpm, 2,500rpm, and 3,500rpm. All caused by poor calibration of the ACIS valve, fueling, ignition, and VVT. A good tune has smooth torque from idle to redline. I've had butter smooth power delivery on the vF Ultimate / EROM 1.2 test tune and on the YotaWerx tunes.

 

The 3.5 has two types of fuel delivery and one of them also can run a Atkinson cycle. Common for Toyota/Lexus motors. The tune makes you run the fuel delivery system that is going to give you you a power bias opposed to the stock tune which is designed to give you fuel economy bias at 55mph. That boost is the car switching fuel delivery or possibly both at once. I’m not an expert but have a general idea of how it works so a tech might be able to chime in with more details.

 

I'm only a month into ownership but am teetering on getting one. I figured I probably need to give it some more time (just over 1800 miles so far) before I start throwing money at a tune to improve my driving experience (that in all honesty, really isn't terrible). I just live in notoriously hilly Seattle so would be nice to have a bit more lower end torque delivery.

No knock on my local KD Max tuner, but $500 cash to meet a guy in a parking lot for an hour to plug a laptop into my brand new truck felt like something I didn't need to rush into.

 

Does that affect long term reliability ? Given that one of the fuel delivery methods is used for valve cleaning etc.

 

OTT or bust

 

You shouldnt go into a tune for felt power ... more about where the power is in regards to the shit points.... thats where its very noticeable

 

Maybe you’ll only get 350k and not 400k out if the motor.
Highly doubtful. These motors are incredibly over-engineered.