2.7 l 4cyl for wood hauling

What’s the biggest thing you’ve hauled with your 4 banger or any of you guys use it for fire wood hauling? In the pic is a 6x12 trailer full of maple a little over a cord give or take. Estimating a weight of a round 4000-5000lbs and am starting to worry if I’ll break something do any of you haul anything that heavy with yours?

 

two trips...

 

When I first saw the alert for this I thought it was from another forum I'm on, Hearth.com - and I just commented on a post about splitting maple! Hauling wood is the primary reason I need a truck. I had an SUV and still a full size pickup truck, but I want to consolidate into one vehicle.

That's a good sized load! How did the truck do hauling it? Nice to see a 4 cylinder doing that. Years ago I had a small 4x6 trailer for my Subaru Forester. I never mastered backing up though! But they're ideal for firewood, a lower load height. I've heard longer trailers are actually easier to back up than a size I had.

The 2007 2.7L 4 cylinder I bought recently does have a hitch.

 

are you monitoring your trans temp carrying a load that big?

 

I estimated this to be about 1200lbs. Distance of travel was one mile. Have since got a small 5x10 utility trailer and installed a proper receiver hitch.

 

There is a lot to towing capacity, people often think of power, cooling, strength of frame, etc.
What is most often overlooked is the mechanical advantage of the trailer against the truck - leverage.

A pallet jack makes a good example if you are familiar with one. A 200 pound man can tow a 2000 pound pallet easily on a smooth concrete floor even though the pallet is 10X heavier than the man.

Now try to stop or turn the same pallet suddenly -- it doesn't matter how "strong" the man is, the weight of the pallet now easily overpowers him. Try the same pallet on a slight incline either up or down, the weight wins every time.

Substitute trailer for pallet and truck for man -- this is always the light truck towing capacity problem.


If you truly have a 4-5k load on the trailer you have:
1) exceeded the 3500 pound towing capacity of your truck
2) passed by the general requirement for electric brakes
3) the trailer is probably rated for 2290 pounds GVW so you would be over that as well -- could be setting yourself up for a ticket or a lawsuit depending on the situation

Will you break anything??
Maybe or maybe not, how much luck do you generally like to count on and how much disposable income do you have for repairs?

Keep your loads lighter, you will be safer and everything will last longer.

And welcome to the forum by the way

 

Longer trailers are night and day easier than shorter trailers. Truck didn’t do too bad I went slow there’s one hill I struggled with cuz I couldn’t gain speed turned and the hill was right there. Other than that breaking was my main concern and of course hoping something doesn’t break lol

 

Not sure how you’d monitor that unless you’re talking about the temp gauge on the dash if so then it was fine. Only drove like 5 ish miles

 

I’m not sure if I had that much on that trailer or not I’m just going by what the internet says that much wood could possibly weigh

 

So your concern was braking and breaking! I also have an Access Cab so with your photo now I have an idea how much I can fit in the bed. If you only had trouble with one hill that's not bad considering the huge load you had.

With the Tacoma I realized I'm sacrificing capacity compared to my full size pickup truck, maybe meaning an another trip. It's good knowing these Tacomas are up to the task (the 4 cylinder truck in particular) while keeping in mind the limitations and safety.

 

buy a scangauge to monitor trans temps and look into getting a trans cooler aswell of temps are pretty high. If the tranny is starting to crap out put a transgo kit on the valve body if this is a work truck.

 

And I was going to ask what size trailer you had - was going to guess a something x 10' - but I see it's 12'. I guess that would be easier to back up with than what I had. Looks like a high end unit with a ramp on the side.

For now I'll have to make do without a trailer. I was maybe going to cut some plywood to put behind the seats over the tool bags, fold up chairs etc. that I have in the back and the jump seats to put a few pieces of wood in there if I were to buy a load. I've done that before with an extended cab Chevy knowing some vacuuming will be needed.

 

More than likely I’ll be taking smaller loads in the future didn’t realize how much weight was actually back there. But yes it is good know it could do it lol

 

The fine print in my owner's manual states trailers over 1k lbs should have trailer brakes.
Personally, my truck pulls a 700lb 4x8 enclosed trailer fine w/o brakes. If the weight doubled or tripled, I'd want brakes. Pulling that trailer felt like I had a parachute deployed...
As far as putting wood in the back, I've had every bit of 900lbs of firewood in the back, many times. Which is my theoretical max for the bed. I just had to use S1 thru S4, and watch out I stayed away from sketchy, panic brake type situations.
4k or 5k trailer loads?! No Thanks

 

Just something worth mentioning..both the V6 model and 4 cylinder model on the 3rd generation has the same exact frame,suspension, transmission, brakes, rear end etc.. but Toyota grossly under rates the 4 cylinder ( 2TR-FE) with a 3,500 lb tow capacity vs the V6 6,500 lb tow capacity that only has a 80lbs of torque difference between the two besides the added some hp of the V6 models..80lbs of torque difference doesn't add up to a 3,000 lb tow difference.. in other parts of the world the same 4 cylinder is rated for 2,500 kgs of towing and is used in much larger vehicles such as a 15 passenger plus 2 configuration (the driver and co-driver)..a total of 5,500 lbs of tow capacity with the 2.7L 2TR-FE 4 cylinder engine.. Toyota under rates it to up sell the V6 models which are much more expensive..the V6 engine is out of different models including the Camry, if someone said a camry could tow even half of that weight everyone would call bullshit on that.. Toyota will most definitely go with the 2.4L turbo engine for the 2024 model year and have a 5,000 lb tow capacity..That said if I had to tow anything more then 4,000 lbs I'd simply go with a full sized truck, just on the safety issue / factor of working so close to capacity of a med sized truck, regardless of what a manufacturer markets..

 

Interesting the 2.7L engine runs other much larger vehicles. Good to know the capacity sounds like it may be rated modestly. Not good to overload, but it seems like a full load of wood in the bed isn't overdoing it.

And yet another V6 being phased out in favor of a 4 cylinder turbo. Subaru also did that with their H6. I wonder how reliable the turbos will be as they exceed 150k miles or so.

 

I agree if a vehicle has turbos, the turbos will fail 100% of the time, just don't know when..and unfortunately it could actually total the vehicle as a single OEM turbo could cost $4k to $6k..and in case of the Tundra being twin turbo, could mechanically total it out easily as who would want to pay that much to fix a higher mileage vehicle? I'm sure there will be rebuild kits and non OEM options but still, hate to be in that situation..

 

Since I had no interest in getting a vehicle with a turbo - I didn't realize the failure rate and cost to repair. Talk about a show stopper! One of the reasons I was confident in buying a 15 year old truck was because it's a Toyota. Sure there can be exceptions with any brand or vehicle, but the 2.7L 4 cylinder in particular has a great reputation. There's so many methods these days to try to maximize fuel economy, a trend lately are turbos on small displacement engines. I'm not in the market for a new Tacoma, but it would be disappointing to see the 2.7L retired for a smaller displacement turbo. I realize many large displacement diesels are turbos, but that's a whole different category.

 

I’ve hauled a fuck ton of things over the years. The weight doesn’t matter and I’m not here to set a record since I’m sure someone has done much more than me but I have easily over loaded the truck according to the manual and what Toyota specs. Running 4.88 gears and the 4 banger handled it pretty good. Really I felt it in the brakes more than anything compared to the power, though I wasn’t going for my fastest 0-60 with an over loaded truck. The factory leaf springs have failed due to the abuse within 2 years. I’m running dobinson leaf spring now and they’re good. Really the factory spring sucks and any aftermarket leaf spring pack will be much better. Note that I said leaf pack and not add on leaf. I went with the dobinsons because of a good Facebook market deal. At the end of the end it’s an engine and it will make power if you rev it out. At the end of the day let’s stroke each other because we’re a minority in the taco group who don’t own a common v6 variant.

 

From what I've seen here the Tacoma seems up to the task with the bed loaded up with wood. I think most of us have overloaded our trucks, I have with my Silverados. I very glad I found this 2.7L, especially with gas prices now. And no doubt it'll be fine when hauling.