exhaust/perfomance

So I know there has been a ton of threads on exhaust and performance. I have an 09 4x4 tacoma with 33in general tires on it. since i put the bigger tires the truck has been feeling a little sluggish in low gears. Ive wanted to do exhaust for a couple reasons of performance and sound obviously. Ive spent a lot of time researching the different brands and to be honest nothing has brought me any closer to pulling the trigger on a system I like based on sound and performance etc. So kinda looking for something to help break down gains and losses here, also open to doing the full system from headers back.

 

Gearing is what you should be looking at to solve this issue... not exhaust.

 

Rehear is the way to go....if you just want sound , get a muffler and cut the exhaust to dump before the axel. I went Flowmaster 44 and dump and it sounds deep with no drone

 

I just went through all this and the end result was the shiz-nit. Dump the hopes for exhaust. I test drove a 2015 with the TRD exhaust and was absolutely not impressed. What a waste of dough; didn't even sound cool. LAME.

What I did was very impressive: I put an AFE Cold Air Intake (CAI) on, and new gears. You want to talk about getting the truck back from the dead? This was the way to go. The AFE CAI was $340 on Amazon. A big boost for little price. The gearing was another story. $1900 out the door but the BIGGEST boost I could have asked for. I seriously was blown away at how my truck came back alive on 35's!

 

Can you explain what you changed on the gearing?

 

I installed a TRD CAI and Flowmaster 50 series American Thunder dual cat-back exhaust system and I got a little better throttle response but not much. Typically cat-backs wont gain you that much.

 

exhaust is the biggest cash grab out there if anyone is realistically looking to get gains out of it. your paying for sound and that's all your going to get.

 

Went from stock to 4:88 gearing (with the help of some opinions here on TW). Went with Nitro Gear Package

 

I went with the afe CAI as well... been thinking from the start i needed to do the gearing glad to hear that someone did it and its worked! just looking for some options at this point to help some upgrades performance and all around

 

Beautiful truck!! I am surprised to hear the CAI did any good, most people say the same about them as exhaust.

Could you explain your results in detail? So you gained power, but I'm assuming in low end? What happened to your RPMs and engine load, (if you measure that) Did it kill your highway power? Any cons or all pros? Burn more/less fuel?

Thanks! I would think you would gain low end power and lose high end but you really never know until you have a first hand review.

 

^^ @Chopper678,

The best I can describe the end result is I now feel the powerband and shift points much more prominently. Without the gearing, it almost seemed like I wasn't really even hitting the band at the right times. I also can tell better gas mileage. I haven't measured the exact MPG but what I do notice is that I'm not filling her up as much. It dam near seems like the truck stock when I rolled it off the lot with 40mi.

The truck has a lot better get-up-and-go at the low end for sure. I don't notice any power loss at the high end. Highway power is clean and does seem better to me. Hope that helps.

 

It sure does help. Currently waiting for a nice deal to pop up for some 4.10 gears, hopefully just the whole 3rd member. I have 265/75R16 and I think the 4.10s would produce similar results to yours. Are you on a stock muffler?

 

I'd like to see the numbers. Just filling up less is not evidence of better mileage, just altered perception.
Larger than stock tires and a gear change to provide better acceleration with larger tires always nets lower gas mileage.

 

I agree that undocumented results are not reliable, but that does not mean they're wrong. I just take it with a grain of salt. Overgearing can be expected to decrease fuel mileage, but changing gears doesn't always mean overgearing. Here are some well-documented results for you to check out if you haven't seen already; they're pretty interesting and don't reflect the consequences most people claim come with larger gears.

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/1st-gen-tacomas/352052-effect-tires-gears-mpg-real-data.html

Aside from ^those^ findings, I am looking to install a 4.10 3rd member on my Tacoma to see the results. I won't have a 3 year report, but I will have detailed before/after of MPG, Engine load, RPMs, and engine temperatures. What I want to know is if the higher RPMs (similar to what you see on the highway with a 2.7L) are balanced by the lowered engine load % with the higher gears. If they are balanced and the engine load is low enough that the higher RPMs do not increase fuel consumption, then MPG should not suffer. If the higher RPMs do outweigh the lower engine load %, then fuel economy will decrease.

I expect the same results as I linked above, a minimal loss, yet with a noticeably higher "city" mileage which will help around town. I also don't often go above 60 MPH so I won't really be redlining.

 

There are no chips for the tacoma unless you mean the urd maf. Bully dog last time I checked didn't have one for the tacoma.

Honestly, supercharging is the best thing. Once you do that you can make a lot of mods to improve the performance. Otherwise, the engine stock is nearly as good as it will get

 

They finally made one huh? I'd like to see some dynos now

 

Amen!! Did Toyota have any info on theres? I wonder if it was just some 3rd party junk pushed by the dealer

 

Eh, don't bother just for my sake. I'll take that guys word and if there was a useful chip we would hear about it