Acceleration lag

Hello, so I drive a 2006 4.0 6L 4WD Tacoma with about 175k miles on it. I have had the truck for ~4 years and have had no issues so far except I had to replace my mass air flow sensor and I’ve put a new battery in recently.

The issue I have is with the accelerator lagging. When I am at a complete stop, at a traffic light for example, and the light turns green and I press down on the accelerator the vehicle kind of lags and doesn’t move until I press a little bit harder on it. Once I do that the vehicle will start to accelerate after kind of “jolting”. The best way I can describe it is the kind of jolt a passenger makes in a manual vehicle as they aren’t used to the shifts or the person driving doesn’t shift smooth.

it only happens after coming to a complete stop, I have no other issues accelerating while already in motion.

I’ve tried cleaning my throttle body in the past as I read somewhere this could be the issue but that didn’t really seem to solve anything. I’ve gotten pretty used to it at this point but after hearing my dad complain about it after he drove my vehicle and driving a different vehicle I realize how smooth the acceleration should be.

any suggestions on what the issue could be and how I could remedy it?

 

I'm no expert, but sounds more like a torque converter/transmission issue. When my reverse randomly starting going out in my old chevy, I'd have to rev the motor pretty high in reverse, then it would engage and I'd burn rubber backwards. In my case, all the folks suggested it was something plugged in my transmission as it went away after that happening about a dozen times. Went on to drive 10s of thousands more miles with no issues. But yeah, makes me think transmission.

 

Manual or Auto? I dealt with some lagging issues, was the fuel pressure regulator. If its auto, MAYBE something could be going in the transmission causing it to slip a bit then grab. The jolting sounds like either a fueling/ignition issue or again something going wrong with the transmission.

 

It’s an auto.

 

are you aware of any diagnostics I could do on my own or am I better off taking it to the dealership and letting them figure it out?

 

If there are no codes, I wouldn't have a clue how to find out what's wrong.

Do you know if the transmission ever had it's fluid changed? No flush, just a drain and replace sorta thing? This could be something you could do for cheap if you are relatively handy and can read and follow a step by step (they're available on here). It might be worth a try before dropping bigger money at a shop.

If you have no other choice, dealer might be your best bet. I use a local privately owned offroad shop for this sort of thing, definitely cheaper than a dealer. Where you located?

 

There are no codes and I’m not sure about the transmission fluid. My father works at a dealership and he’s cool with the mechanics, so I’m not too worried about the price. Just wanted to see if anyone else had similar issues and if there was an easy fix but it sounds like I’m better off just getting it checked out professionally.

 

That's what I'd do! Not all of us are as mechanically inclined as others on here, and there's nothing wrong with that. If/when you figure it out, come back and let us know what you found

 

It sounds to me like it's not downshifting all the way when you stop, then it tries to take off in L2, you step on it a little more, it downshifts into L1, builds a few revs and takes off.
This is a limited guess, but it sounds like transmission to me.

 

My truck does this if I shift from neutral into drive and then get on it too quick. I have solid motor mounts so sometimes I go into neutral at the signal to not feel the engine vibrate as much. If I get on it immediately, it’ll start out in second, bog, and then downshift and takeoff aggressively. As long as I leave it in drive for few seconds before getting on it I Don’t experience this phenomena.

The OP’s description sounds just like what you were saying.

 

It could be the transmission slipping. When it lags off the line, does the RPM rev up and then all of a sudden it finally goes?