The joys of towing - 10mpg!

Once again towed a car with the U-Haul car carrier and was blessed with 10mpg towing the flats of Florida. The Transmission is absolutely garbage. Constant down shifting and high RPMs just to maintain highway speeds. Ran about 3k rpm most of the way. If I hit any type of incline, it dropped another gear and would scream to 4500 rpm. 67mph was the best I could do to keep the rpms at 2000 which I assume it 8th gear.

 

Did you use ECT and S-4 (not D)? Tacoma needs higher revs to get better torque, and gear 5/6 drops revs too much for that torque.

 

Tacoma isn't the best for towing, its a midsize truck. If you tow a lot I probably would've bought a Tundra or a real, domestic full-size. Also, Tacomas come with 5/6 speed gearboxes.

 

what richochet said^
and a tune makes worlds of difference. I still get crap mileage [KD Max tune] but up/down shifting is over and I just use D4 with no ECT button.

 

3rd gen only has 6 gears

ECT helps

when I towed with my auto I usually stayed at 65 or less. it really didnt like going faster than that. with the manual transmission once I got to 5th gear, I could go whatever speed I wanted and it didnt care.

 

The 3.5 makes power in the upper RPM range, so it sounds like it was performing as designed. The transmission was doing what it was told by the ECU, based on where the engine makes it's power needed for the demand.
As mentioned, this is far from a tow vehicle. Yes, it can tow smaller/ lighter loads. But if you are going to moving vehicles, you have the wrong truck.
U-Haul lists their trailer at 2,210 pounds empty, how much was the vehicle and all the other gear occupants?

 

F-450 6.7 diesel is what you need, it's probably overkill but any diesel tow truck I drove you barely could feel a car back there. The V8s weren't bad, any HD truck would probably be fine along with most 1/2 tons.

 

How heavy was this car? I get 14-15 or so mpg pulling 4200 lbs of car + trailer out of my nissan, but that's a 6 speed manual.

 

MT, FTW














again

 

Yeah I recently towed a 5x8 uhaul trailer about 900 miles through Florida and Georgia as well and got about 11-12 mpg.

 

If you think your Tacoma is in 8th gear. you probably never read the owners manual. That book would show you are way overweight.

 

Having towed a small camper with the wife's Forester I would have thought my Tacoma would have
handled it better. It's just fine on flat level roads but inclines were a bit difficult. I run ECT and S4 with
occasional push-ups into S5 on the downhill slides but also drop-downs to S3 on steep inclines at elevation.

Thought the V6 would have been better at this. I still love the truck and wouldn't trade it tho.

 

And then they decided to make the engine even smaller. Big logic.

 

You couldn't give me a Gen4 - I don't like that new-fangled-turbo thing they put in it and I don't
care for the new body styling either.... For what it is the Gen3 is just about perfect...

 

Don’t think the transmission is the issue the engine is just underpowered.

 

My experience was there is too large a gap between 3rd and 4th. It couldn’t pull in 4th, but 3rd required so little throttle input to maintain speed.

 

I tried ECT and made no difference.

I must have been thinking about the IS, but yeah, 6 speed! If you drive around Miami anything under 70 you will get ran over. Well except when you are sitting in miserable traffic with the rudest people on earth.

3700 lbs IS 350 and the uhaul auto transport which weighs 2200 lbs. I think this was a scenario that I could have been better off with a manual that I could have left in 6th and just dealt with the speed changes without having to down shift. I wasn't expecting great mileage based on other tows, but wasn't exactly thrilled to see 10 mpg.

 

ECT helps by forcing the gears to hold off changing ... higher revs. But S4 limits the ECU from shifting higher ... you force the transmission from going into a lower rev gear. Also consider speed control ... highway driving with just a few normal things in the truck at 70 was low ... dropping to 65 was more stable, 60 held 20 MPG better.

 

Size has nothing to do with it. The smaller fourth gen engine blows the 3.5l out of the water in every performance metric.

 

Your engine is designed to run fast where it makes the most power. It won't hurt it. You might need earplugs. Google 2016 Tacoma Ike Gauntlet on YouTube.