Can someone please tell me the Tow Truth and nothing by the Trute?

Possible, and doable, but no fun. Everything you do, the truck will be at it's limits, no joy in that. No relaxing or playing.

 

Option b is doable, travel light and set the truck up right. Airbags or sumosprings will definitely help and a good sway hitch.

 

A 4-cyl Tacoma has a MUCH higher power to weight ratio, while pulling 10,000 pounds (160/14000=0.0114), than a loaded semi (500/80000=0.00625).

 

Yep, I probably would have found great comfort in screaming out the window at all the semi's blowing past me and fighting the wind they produced, that I had a better power to weight ratio

I've towed with the 2.7 at nowhere close to the limits, and I'm happy to not do it anymore. I can't imagine trying that with OP's trailer idea. I spent a majority of my life towing around semi's, anything froasm 4x8 flatbeds to 30' boats and campers, lack of experience isn't an issue with me. Once I hitch up, I flat out KNOW this is going to suck .

 

You're not thinking straight. They CAN'T "blow past you", because they CAN'T KEEP UP.

 

At this point, not sure if you're joking or not. So its either sad or funny. In any case a 159hp taco pulling 10k
Lbs isnt running away from anything. Even denial is going to catch it.

 

If you new a little bit of basic physics, you'd know that this is no joke and completely accurate.
Since you clearly don't know any basic physics, please excuse yourself from this type of discussion.

 

Good lord, the background i have...

Anyway, you don't need a background in physics, you need 2 minutes on the interstate. But feel free to amuse yourself as you see fit.

 

This guy speaks the truth

 

Some tongue weights you listed are above the max. In addition the total weight is very close to max & the shear size with possible weather & wind affecting your pulling.

I would opt for a larger truck with a tongue & towing capacity that had a decent margin ABOVE what I was looking to pull.

 

If you drive as well as you physics, that will be plenty of time to kill lots of people in a big pileup.

 

As well as I physics... anyway.?
So power to weight ratio is what's important, nothing else? Ok, then. This will take some time, but being we're now apparently in an internet pissing contest for some reason I guess it's time for an insult... but really what's the point? Make one up and you can get upset about me calling you that while I do some typing

 

If you don't know what you are making a fool of yourself over, then GO BACK AND READ THE THREAD.

 

Ok, let's start with some basic specs and then I'll move on to sarcasm and then move on again. All #'s are generics, not referring to any individual motor, math done on the fly and I don't care about typos right now etc etc etc.

2004 tacoma 2.7l (have to pick a year since things vary) weighs between 3270 and 3470 lbs (2 door to 4 door etc), let's use the 2 door weight as that will give the most favorable numbers to you.

2.7l =150hp
Theoretical trailer 10,000lbs (which is an omg amount of weight on a taco, but whatever since I didn't pick it).
Power to weight ratio = .011 (150hp/13270lbs)

Hypothetical semi, your numbers here: 500hp, 80k loaded. fwiw 80K is the max allowable weight (in some areas and some configurations), a majority of the trucks on the road are pulling no where close to this amount. And different locales have different max weights, and generally it's based on axles and length etc. But whatever, let's use these numbers.

So power to weight = .006 (500hp/80klbs)

So there you go, proof positive that the... crap. I guess the taco is almost twice the tow vehicle the semi is.

Ok, I'm wrong and I admit it. I'm a big enough man to take my lumps.

But let's go further. What else would work better than a semi?


This is a 250cc kawasak ninja. It weighs about 300lbs and produces about 30hp.


So let's hook up our hypothetical 10k lb trailer to it.

30hp/10300lbs, ptwr= .002.

So the 250cc motorcycle, that if you ride you'll consider bikes of this class "too slow to get out of their own way", twice the tow vehicle the taco is with the same load. And 4 times better than the semi.

This is a troybilt lawnmower. It weighs about 490lbs, and has 17hp.


Let's hitch up! 17hp/10490lbs =.0016. Arguable not as good as the tacoma but let's be reasonable and adjust that load a bit. I mean it is just a lawnmower. But it looks like if we drop the total load to 2500lbs, we end up with a ptwr of about .006. Just as good as a fully loaded, to the gills, semi truck. And at what a bargain! Knock that down to 2klbs and just watch that lawnmower fly down the interstate pulling away from every semi! I mean it HAS TO because the power to weight ratio is better!

Ok, maybe I'm being unreasonable here. But really I'm just in the pocket of big semi and don't want the world to know how much money could be saved if every major shipping company switched over from tractor tailers to a fleet of lawnmowers.

What about base truck, no load?
The taco comes in with a ratio of .05 (rounded up, 150/3270), not too shabby!

Hi. I'm a horse!

I'm assuming I generate... 1hp and weigh about 800 lbs.
That gives me a ptwr of about .001.

But I can sprint at over 43mph (record here)

This is Usain Bolt, the fastest man alive.


He weighs 209 lbs. I know this as fact because Usain is a dear friend. To people that know him. I've never met the guy so I'll have to take googles word for it.

Usain generates about 3hp at peak.
3/209 gives Usain a ptwr of .06. I'm guessing in the picture posted he's celebrating the fact he has just outran a tacoma.

But, I can sprint at only 27mph, which is about 1/2 the speed of a horse whose ratio is so much lower than mine.

So what does all this tell us based on power to weight? Well, 1 the best way to move a load across the country is with a troybilt lawnmower. And 2 if you're just looking for day to day moving around you should use a usain bolt. But primarily it shows that 3. Power to weight ratios are actually only usable when comparing almost identical vehicles to one another. Once you branch out of that, it's pretty worthless. So car a to b, truck a to b etc. And all they do is show what for a very specific snapshot in time what the motivating force is doing. Once you start comparing things from different categories it all goes pretty much out the window.


Well, how can this be? Maybe it's because there is more to moving a load than hp. Like what you ask! (well depending on who's reading this there was probably more profanity involved).

Quick answer... torque. Torque is what moves the vehicle. Torque is a measurement of the amount of pressure being applied along a rotation axle. It requires 0 movement, just weight and a lever.

The tacoma produces 159 ft/lbs of torque. Imagine taking 1 lb of mass and putting it on the end of a fixed lever 159 feet long. That's what, at peak, the 2.7 produces. Take that number and factor in rotational movement and you have HP.

So hypothetical semi engine, take 1 lb of mass and hang it on a fixed lever over 2000 feet long. Quite the difference isn't it? 150hp engine to 500hp engine, the big engine has only (roughly) 3 times the horsepower. But it has over 12 times the torque.

How about we think about HOW that power is delivered. I previously mentioned a snapshot of a moment in time.

This is a dyno chart. Is it my truck? No its not. It's probably not yours either and it doesn't actually matter since you can run the same engine back to back and get different results. Hell it could be a honda civic and still not matter as it's just being used to illustrate a point.


At peak the engine produces 147hp (I should have grabbed one that shows torque as well, but I should also be working right now).

Where else does it produce 147hp? Exactly nowhere. At that rpm and that rpm only, it is doing everything it possibly can. So at that engine speed you have x power to weight, but the entire time the engine is trying to get to or maintain that rpm, the ratio falls by magnitude. If the engine doesn't produce enough torque to get to that magic number or sustain it, it falls substantially. And you'll notice how peaky that climb is, and how fast it drops off from that peak number.

Gas engines are never at a steady state unless you have absolutely ideal conditions so the actual hp will vary from pretty much 0 all the way to 147. Move from flat land to a hill (most of my towing experience is mountains, if you live in kansas it might not matter) RPM drops, hp drops and pretty soon you have 2 choices. Downshift or stall. So you downshift and bam! right back to 147hp (for this example why not), except you're down a gear. Can your truck do 80 in 4th? Maybe. Is it happy? Not really. Is it actually spinning faster than it's peak rpm and therefore producing less hp? Probably. And I can't shift up to 5th because my engine doesn't produce enough torque to pull that load in that gearing. And once the climb increases, rpm drops again, hp drops, and now you're in 3rd. You may pass the semi's on the flats (given enough flat)

But the entire time those semi's, the ones with the inferior ptwr, are blowing you off the road. Not because of the power they produce, which doesn't hurt, but because of how they deliver power. While their charts still have peak #'s, substantially more of it's peak torque is being produced across the entire rpm spread. It's doing more every rotation on average than the 2.7 (pretty much any gas engine) possibly can. Diesel vs gas, there's a reason 1 is preferred.

You don't need a phd in any physics based study, most of this was taught in junior high. For practical experience just go hitch up to 10k lbs (not recommending you do this btw) and hit the interstate. Or go the logical route and count the number of threads on the internet complaining that their taco tows too well and needs to be powered down.

Anyway, I'm done. I'm spent. I'm bored. So once again, amuse yourself from this point

 

That's really cute, pal, but not applicable.
1) Motorcycle does not have a flat torque curve. In fact, motorcycle's torque curve makes mount everest look FLAT.
2) The rest of your examples are not geared correctly to get up to highway speed.

 

I see a full size in your future. Problem with TTs is wind resistance in addition to weight. Then you have x winds to consider. I would tow a 4000 bass boat with mine but not a 4000 lb TT or say a high profile boat. My truck blocks a good part of the wind when I pull my bassboat. Having towed different style boats I tell you wind resistance is a big factor.

 

Indeed. Even a mild ~10mph headwind was a thorn in my ass. And yeah, with a bigger trailer you feel the crosswinds a lot more.

 

Love my Tacoma, but IMHO these trucks are not good tow vehicles at all.

 

It all depends on what you are towing. Tacoma does fine towing my bass boat. In fact it does as well or better than some of the older F150s I have owned.

 

Trust me, do not engage, it's pointless talking to a stump (as in, dumb as??), been there, won't do it again.