Mpg after 1000 miles on manual 4wd SR

Every day that passes, I get ever more antsy to trade in my 3rd gen for a 4th gen….manual of course. Just the torque alone is so appealing. I’m not really concerned about long term…like anything, if it breaks you fix it and move on. It’s not like the 3rd gen 3.5L is the pinnacle of reliability anyways.

Thanks for sharing!

 

I admire the extra torque, but the 4th gen's backside is just so ugly. It looks like a perpetual rear-ender. I know my 3rd gen is slower, but the ladies like a slowride over racing to just using the brakes at the next light. It's not in how fast you go, but in how you get there, if you know what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfwsXn5n8HU

 

Well, the ladies may like a slow ride….I don’t.

Honestly, I don’t really care about the appearance much either way. I think both gens look good. And like everything new, I think after some time the weirdness wears off and they don’t look bad. Same happened for me with the Tundra, I thought they were hideous when new, but I don’t think they’re so bad now. Still not my favorite, but not bad. I like the Tacoma much more than Tundra right off the bat, and from the front I like the new Tacoma much better than my 3G. Factor in the performance and I am sold.

I like my 3G overall but for my preferences, it honestly could not be more boring. I will probably cave and trade in the near future. The only real factor holding me back is how much crap I’d want to part out from my current truck. What a pain.

 

Oh. I wasn't referencing trucks.

All joking aside, I absolutely love my 3rd gen. Whenever I grab the keys, I feel like a puppy all jazzed up for a walk. I see you have a m/t like me, but you find it boring. Funny how subjective everything is. I would be curious to know what you drove before. I'm coming from automatic Hondas and a 99 taco, so I'm stoked on the 3rd gen. I guess our past experiences shape our current perspectives.

However, as far as trucks go, my favorite truck to drive was my old work truck. It was a 2011 F250 turbo diesel with a 5 speed manual. Single cab with a lift. That thing was a hoot! But, if I had to choose, I'd take my current set of wheels.

 

My first manual was a 94 Wrangler 4.0, which I still own. It is very torquey, mediocre horsepower. Very good in town, not as great on the highway for passing. My daily for a while while keeping the Jeep was a Ford Ranger 3.0. Not fast at all, overall slower than the Tacoma but it complained less at low rpm, which is sad. That is ultimately where I hate the Tacoma.

Nissan Frontier 6 speed manual was what I had before this Tacoma, that thing was a beast. It was a very good mix of horsepower and down low torque. If people could drive that back to back with the 3.5, I doubt a single person would choose the 3.5.

Then there is now the Tacoma. I like the truck, I just hate the low end grunt, or lack of, that this engine has. 4th gen appears to solve every complaint I have. I can still drive it sportily, but I really have to wring its neck constantly and there’s still just nothing down low. I’ve accepted it for what it is, but that doesn’t change me not liking it. The rest of the truck is good though and it’s been a good vehicle, hence why it’s still here. If it was a POS vehicle on top of the performance it yields, it would have been gone long long ago. Thankfully it’s been good to me for the most part so I’ve been happy with it.

I think the lack of low end torque is actually Toyota limiting what the engine will do to prevent lugging. Seriously, my Ranger had more get up and go in 2nd gear and it was a much taller gear setup than this one, with far less engine torque/hp driving it. Toyota seems to really want to prevent lugging the motor, so it’s overly cautious and doesn’t give you what you ask for until you’re well up into the rpm range. And I’m not trying to lug it, but it’s comically bad when you’re at 5-10 mph in 2nd and need to pickup speed.

 

Yeah, I see that. If I want to take off quick from a stop I really have to work the gas and clutch to get those rpm's up.

You would've hated my 99 Tacoma. It was a 5 m/t with the little 2.4l. I got good gas mileage. Depending on how how hilly and windy the highway was combined with how I drove it, I could get anything from 25mpg to 32mpg out of that little truck. But, if I ever wanted to pass someone on the highway I had to downshift to 4th or even 3rd and gun the rpm's to redline. And that truck was slow from a dead stop like my 90 Honda Accord. The only vehicles I've had with anything larger than a 4cyl was my work truck, and a 65 Corvair and a 62 Chevy panel van. The 3rd gen is a racecar by comparison. So, I love the V6. I'd be all in on the 4th gen if it had a V6 turbo. I just don't like 4cyl in anything other than VW's, Honda's and the like.

It is too bad Toyota didn't keep the 4.0 in the 3rd gen. I'm sure they could've kept the 4.0 and with today's technology and engineering, gotten around the same emissions. I guess all I can say about that is, "Oh well Toyota."

This is a gross over-generalization, but funny how in the 60s and early 70s it was all about horsepower, then in the 80's to 2000's mpg was king. Now it's all about emissions. I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself down through the generations. Westward the wagons, across the sands of time until we- ah, look at me. I'm ramblin' again.

 

Not bad. My truck would get 18-19 on summer gas at those speeds, my truck is not stock though.

Best I got on my stock Tacoma (well except 265/65/17 E rated ko2s) was 24.5 MPGs but that was driving around 60 or so.

 

I get the best gas mileage around 35 to 55 mph. But once I go past 70mph, my gas mileage tanks.

 

What's this SR manual unicorn you guys are yapping about?


No such beast available up here yet.

 

I'm happy it isn't. All the beeping nannies on cars these days drive me nuts. I don't like tss either though. Or radar cruise. Or babies . Or sunshine. Geeez I'm an old man lol

 

Are you ok with the downspec dash ? That thing looks silly

 

Yeah that whole rear end doesn’t matter what angle you are looking it, is just fugly…

I’m not a huge fan of how 4G looks in general. Too many body lines.

The new ZR2 looks so much better, they nailed it with that one. Just look at it!

 

Old men rock. Just don't get me started on AI.

I have the lane departure alert on my truck. I just keep forgetting to take it off. The other day it kept going off on me and I muttered, "Yeah yeah. I hear ya." My wife was with me and was like, "Who are you talking to, crazy?"

 

I think the 14 inch screen is “silly”

 

guess my unicorn spec isn’t available north of border….

 

Don't get me wrong, I can certainly PHYSICALLY drive without BSM no problem. But I can't mentally be OK with buying a new vehicle in the year of our Lord 2024, paying north of 40k for it, and not have BSM. Are you f***ing kidding me? Volkswagen gives a substantial discount on MSRP for their cars in the off chance that their cars don't have one, but it's not the "default" option, it's the "whoops, the factory really needed to move this one and couldn't wait for the chip. Here's $500 off the sticker."

 

SR manual should have a sticky thread of its own , aka the cheat code spec

 

Also the most basic 4th gen beats the pants out of my “top of the line” 2nd gen features/tech when it was brand new. Tech/interior/screens/safety/frame/abs/ect… that come standard at $38k is not too shabby. Enjoy your taco OP.

 

Well stated. Keep that 2nd gen as long as you can…then grab you a 4th gen SR

 

Till the wheels fall off, lol.