OCD about transmission wear and shifting?

With my auto trans, if anything, I was more concerned with trans temps when I'm loaded up on my adventures. I monitor it with my Scangauge. I've since installed another trans cooler and my temps are overall 15 deg cooler, which helps. My adventures are weekly and I'm always going up and over the mountains here, and I'm not worried about my trans (as picky as I am). There are sooo many Tacomas where I live and most people I know have one and not one ever had an issue with the trans.

 

I run between D-4-3 around town to maintain speed without braking on down hills, of which we have many and steep. I don't even think about transmission longevity...

I personally wouldn't lock it into 1 at slower speeds though, but I doubt that'll actually cause any issues.

If transmissions weren't made to be shifted then they'd come with 4 positions: P-R-N-D
... the purpose of a transmission is to match engine speed to road speed...

 

Just drive it....only on TW does anyone give any thought to "shifting" their Tacoma. Every day, tens of thousands of Tacoma drivers get in their trucks, put them drive, and go. Shift it, or let the tranny do what it was designed to do. You'll likely be tired of the truck before the tranny gives up.

 

sounds like u should've bought a MT bc ur doing unnecessary work for no reward

Long as ur consistent with fluid changes and keeping temps down ur fine

 

So youre the guy I wanna cuss at while cruising on the highway for not maintaining speed on hills?

Just drive it and let it do what it was meant to do.

 

I make that skinny pedal my bitch whether it's in one of my Corvettes or the Tacoma; speaking of...if you just perform the needed service when required you should be good.

Just replaced my transmission pan gasket with Toyota FIPG. Took 250k miles for it to leak finally -

 

Six of one, half dozen of the other. Leaving it in first means more RPM's, so wouldn't that mean more wear on your engine (thereby shortening its life instead)? The only time I ever manually shift my automatic is if I'm towing, and even then it's more a matter of locking out the higher gears in hill country with a heavy load than about picking what gear I'm in.
Just drive your truck and it'll be fine. Stop trying to out think the many engineers with many advanced degrees that designed your transmission and let it do its job. Proper maintenance at the correct intervals will have a much more dramatic effect on the longevity of your truck's components than babysitting the transmission ever could. Besides, I'd hate to see you get into an accident (which will shorten your truck's life much more dramatically than gear selection) because you were fretting about a gear change rather than watching that moron with the beater not signal his turn in front of you.