Towing 4th Gear

well, hopefully a regear helps with this. Expecting my 4.88 at 55mph in 5th towing will (manual).

wouldn’t be good on 3.73.

I don’t think MPG is the issue. Tank size is.
Buddy’s ford diesel MPG goes down towing. But it comes with a big tank.

not the Tacoma water balloon tank.

 

do the 2nd gens have a thermostat you can pin in with a paper clip (under center front of truck on my 3rd gen)? Pinning mine dropped my trans temp 20 degrees, but I’m also towing 4,000lbs

 

For worry-free boat or any other towing, forgo the monitoring gauges and spend the money installing a bigger auxiliary transmission cooler. (the biggest one that will fit). You have the factory tow package so it's a simple matter of installing the new cooler in series downstream of the stock one with a couple of hoses and a few new clamps. Much less than the cost of installing monitoring gauges and if you switch to synthetic transmission fluid, you can tow a battleship at any speed you want within the capabilities of the Tacoma. Use the factory expansion-type clamps if you do: not the worm-gear ones.

 

Yeah, regear would definitely lighten the load on all the components before the diff(s). At the expense of MPG of course, but like I said MPG wasn't the main concern I was trying to address. Abysmal MPG is par for the course in these trucks, everything's a trade-off and there's no free lunch. There is something to be said about the compromise between higher RPMs being better for cooling, and not wanting it to be screaming for long periods as this will also cause accelerated engine wear. But within reason higher engine RPM is usually still better than lugging along at lower RPM. It all depends on your individual setup.

That's why when ya slap on oversized tires, you're taxing your stock drivetrain because you change your torque ratio between the axles and the road, and the engine/trans have to work harder to compensate, moving the vehicle further with each rotation. So then you regear your diffs, which shifts that extra torque burden to only the axles, allowing the engine/trans to operate more efficiently at the cost of cruising speed. But like anything else, beefing up one part of a system only moves your probable failure point to the next weakest link; in this case diffs, axles, bearings, suspension.

I was only referring to the basic physics/thermodynamics of the scenario. If you command a system to provide "X" additional force for "Y" periods of time, every component is gonna incur additional wear and heat for each unit of force/energy being put through it over time. Highway speed towing is approaching the limits of the stock taco drivetrain thanks to drag. It's not exactly a heavy-hauling powerhouse to begin with, and the closer you get to its absolute limit, the more accelerated the wear is. Yeah, it'll DO it, but it's demanding a LOT of your machine. If you slow down even a few mph, it significantly reduces the amount of force/energy pumping through the system to maintain speed against drag, as is REFLECTED in your MPG. Thus greatly reducing that wear and helping to prolong the life of your equipment at the cost of a few minutes over the course of a 60-odd mile trip.

Towing is hard in general, but even reducing the drivetrain load by 20% when you tow regularly keeps everything happier, and could mean the difference between failing at 150k or lasting 400k+ with minimal maintenance. Don't get on me about statistics, that's a vague speculation based on many years of general mechanical experience. I tow fairly regularly, including some heavy hauls(by taco standards), and do my best to treat the truck well when I can. I'm not one of the many that simply plan to buy a new truck every few years, so I save where I can while still using my little truck for truck things. At 200k now with zero drivetrain issues and barely any non-routine maintenance.

That's all I'm saying. I don't own or maintain any of y'alls trucks. Drive them however y'all see fit.

 

My turbo Diesel 1995 F350 with 35s gets 19mpg unloaded and 14mpg when towing a 10k trailer with 6 people and all of the stuff we needed to bring at about 2k more to the load.