24 Taco TRD ride quality is awful. Help?

When I got my last free oil change the techs aired both my pass side tires up to 45 and didn't even touch the driver side.

I didn't even bother saying anything.

 

I do plan to take this off road for sure. I’m looking into getting camping gear for it in the coming year. And I have yard work (just not during winter) so I’ll be loading it with mulch and dirt come spring and see if that changes the ride then. Good thought there.

 

Wow, that seems like it’s on the high side of PSI. The FTS said 35 range was appropriate, but maybe he’s wrong about that too. lol

 

Did you go on a test drive before dropping 70k?

 

Before buying my first truck, I owned a vehicle most probably never heard of. A 2011 Suzuki Kizashi, bought brand new off the lot and kept it for about 14 years. It never had a mechanical problem, just general maintenance for all 150k miles on it. But Suzuki in US went bankrupt in like 2015.

 

Nope, I had made my mind up this was the truck I wanted and never questioned Toyota’s reliability and happy customer base, including myself. My wife has a 2020 Highlander that we love, so the thought of not being fully satisfied with the vehicle never crossed my mind.

 

Trade you my van for it, straight up!

 

I knew I was f’d the second I drove off the lot in April 2010. Put some weight in the bed and beat the tarnation out of that thing.

 

Tire pressure will be posted on a sticker inside the driver's door, and in the manual. Just confirm the listed tire size is what's actually on the truck. This will have the greatest impact on ride quality, and 35 is going to be too high.

This is how you know he's not an expert; there is an exact number the pressure is supposed to be, no one has to guess, lol.

The Highlander hybrid is a completely different design than the Tacoma; it's actually made drom the ground up for fuel economy. The Tacoma is more like a mild hybrid, where it uses the electric motor to get more power, but not always better economy.

It sounds like you haven't had the truck too long, so know that gas mileage generally increases in the first fe thousand miles. You'll also probably find out when / where the truck performs best. You mention city driving, and it's not surprising you're getting crap mileage there. (I get 15 mpg in my stock 4Runner in the city). This being your first truck, you'll learn that heavy vehicles with thirsty engines quickly fall off the expected fuel economy range in even slightly adverse conditions.

 

Part of the charm, eh? Haha love that. So the TRD Pro’s are fairly rare in 2024. My local dealer had received only 1 the entire year. The one I drove out of state to get this one, I bought their second Pro they had received all year. Another dealer I contacted had also only received 1 the whole year. The Pro’s are not as common as the other trim levels.

 

You could drive anything SR5 or above (below that they have a different suspension design), and at least see if it's just a Tacoma issue (which some of us suspect; at the end of the day they are midsized trucks, which have always rode like crap).

In my 2012 TRD Sport, I swore I could feel a nickel if I drove over it.

 

They did fuck up one thing pretty bad: Toyota put a smaller gas tank in the 2024s vs the earlier models (19 vs 21), so unless you're hitting exactly the rated MPG, you will see the tank range issue you mentioned here.

 

Great points here. I did just go out and confirm the door panel says 30PSI for all four tires. But I do wonder if this is the right PSI for these Wrangler Territory tires or if that’s more for all-season tires.

 

A nickel hahaha thanks for the laugh and the information. I probably do need to just go test drive one and see if what I’m experiencing is normal ride quality.

 

Get the tire pressure set to what the door sticker says if the tire size matches. There are some sites where you can convert pressures if it does not. Then go into the gauge settings and set the TPMS pressure. Warning should trigger if pressure drops by 25%.

 

Anytime somebody touches the tires you need to fix the air pressure. On my first service, the checklist said 30psi was the correct pressure, but they aired up to 36 anyway.
Then I got into the whole, "which pressure do I believe, the TPMS, or my dial gauge".

 

30 is correct for your tires. Any passenger vehicle tire in that size should be run at that pressure on that truck. 5 psi should make a big difference in comfort and handling, so you may be in luck.

Things only get tricky when you go to different sizes, or use heavier duty tires with a higher load rating (LT, or light truck tires, vs. yours are most likely P-rated). Although "light truck" actually means a relatively big truck compared to the Taco. I'd go ahead and say stay away from LT tires for the foreseeable future, those make the ride much worse. Get some miles under your belt and go down the tire rabbit hole when these wear out.

 

Great advice here. I just checked the tires specs and they do match the exact tire size as the door sticker indicates, so I need to drop them back to 30PSI. I also did notice you can adjust the TPMS settings to match your requirement so I’m going to make that change (although I will say they were at 30 before and still rode unfavorably, but I’d rather match Toyota’s design spec in this case).

 

awful lot of discussion when the most probable answer is in the OP