Go big or go home...getting a double cab long bed

Recently I finally had the chance to take the 4 banger out on a long road trip. I always know it's slow and underpowered, but driving in the city stop and go traffic I find it adequate.

The truck is stock with stock size highway tires.
Most of the time on highway I had it set on cruise control at 85 mph, the engine stayed at 4.5k RPM almost the entire time. Occasionally it would forget that it's a 4 banger and tried up shift and then immediately downshift to 4k RPM.

If there's any uphill gradient, it'd down shift to rev until redline. The truck's broken in so I didn't think too much about hitting high RPM every once in a while, but maintaining 4.5k RPM for hours and hours can't be good, right? Plus the truck avg about 15 mpg at that speed highway driving

anyway, I just put a deposit on an allocation of V6 DCLB, longer wheel base and more horsepower should make highway experience better.

 

Nothing wrong with it, as long as its maintained it can do that for decades.

Boat engines can maintain high rpms for a long time and they are often not taken care of.

 

just got mine...DCLB Off Road, for my needs the short bed is impractical

 

The 2.7L cruises 75+ mph much better with cruise control OFF. A lot of incline highway stretches it will hold 6th gear with cruise off, but downshifts to 4th gear and 4000+ rpm’s with the worthless cruise control.

 

In my gen1 the cruise control would sometimes click off on steepish long highway grades. I normally didn't use it on those but every so often the grade would increase when I wasn't paying attention. It happened once on a road trip when a friend had taken over driving duties. He had it set to 80 or something and it clicked off. He is a very conscientious German, and started pulling over to the shoulder while apologizing profusely. He thought he had blown the engine or something. Didn't occur to him to just press the gas pedal with his foot

 

I always thought sustained high engine speeds can lead to engine overheating. I remember driving through the mountains near San Diego CA, there are signs saying turn off AC and reduce engine load to prevent overheating. Those mountain highways have long steep climbs.

Maybe that only applies to badly maintained vehicles, I change oil every 5k and coolant every 50k miles, never overheated any engine in my whole life.

 

Get a Tundra.