Anyone else think the 6speed is clunkier than 5speed?

I can say that fourth gear is really handy for slower driving on narrow windy local roads with no engine lugging. It is also good for transporting heavy loads at safe speeds again on local roads. Fifth ,some times forth, is good when moderately loaded and traveling up longer hills. Sixth gear can slip with even a moderate load on the same type of hill. I have gotten loads of stone blend at a mason yard. Those loads are at max payload for the truck. When leaving the yard it is necessary to start off on a hill at a traffic light. First gear gets me going easily. I can also creep along very slowly in heavy traffic in first gear almost at idle speeds. I do wish sixth was taller for flat highway travel. It is certainly not a sports car transmission but it works well.

If you have been to Japan you will find that a lot of the country is mountainous with winding, very narrow roads and long hills (main island anyway) I find it a lot like the northeast US. Many contractors and local farmers use very small trucks for their work with tiny engines and most of these are 4wd and many are diesel. That requires a lot of gears options. Interestingly, the HI-LUX is not sold in Japan. When I first went in the early '90's ,the four door pickup (like a Tacoma) was everywhere. Now there are mostly cab over style trucks that scale up from very small to big commercial trucks.

 

@Troyken, you may not have heard but Toyota brought the Hilux back to Japan in 2017 after stopping sales of it in 2004 due to demand.

If you're adhering to the payload plate you're not getting much masonry. Used to routinely load my 1991 up to a ton of landscaping material but I wouldn't attempt that with my Taco.

 

I did not hear that but it may be true. My boss was there 2 summers ago and I asked him to get a brochure from a Toyota Dealer. They had none and said the HI-Lux was not sold in Japan at that time. He just came back from there last week, I should have asked him to check again.

I usually get about 1/2 yard at a time which is about 1300 lbs or so. I live on a gravel road so I use about 2-3 yards a year to keep it nice in front of the house.

 

Yeah I paid like $16 for the brakeline and fitting from Napa.
After looking at it I also noticed I could've just used the little coupler to join the line, for some reason I didn't come across that info.
It all worked out I just configured the brakeline and attached the coupler along with the wife helping me bleed the clutch.

 

Yes 1/2 a yard is about max on everything in a 1/2 ton truck. My drive way is about 1,500' a wheeler is about right for what I need.

 

Check the fuel spec. at highway it's the same as the auto. Least it is on my 2011.

 

I have owned Toyota pickups since 1980 if you put 2000# in a 1/2 ton Toyota you are asking for trouble, you can't stop it, the springs are maxed out and the wheel bearings are overloaded I don't care what year it is. They made a "Stout" it had a one ton full floating axle under it but it was rated 3/4 ton max because it was not dual wheels.

 

Yeah, you may be right, that poor truck had only gotten to 300k miles when I sold it in 2015. I personally put 200k of those on and the original owner used it in his canoe building business initially.

It was starting to wear out and was once totaled in an accident even. But it had long since been built up, 25mm torsions, ball joints spacers, OME heavy springs and shocks all around, gotten through the Rubicon, several Cruise Moabs, lots and lots of trails from Wyoming down to Arizona.

It went to a friend who is still using it as his personal vehicle as a landscape crew supervisor, so it's living a little easier than when I had it - other than the constant Iowa road salt it's getting.

BTW, the landscape supply was about a mile from the house on surface streets, it wasn't being badly abused and I wasn't being a nuisance to the public. It was about a yard that filled the bed to the rail with a mount and was heavy for sure. But exactly how full I got depended on the material of course. I had a chain I would hang from the frame rail that represented my max load, which was based on the spring pack starting rate (OME rated for constant GVW) plus the extra main leaf (+200 lbs) and extra overload I put in. The truck had a GVWR of 5,350 lbs and weighed 3,650 lbs curb. Fully built (I had sliders, ARB bumper but with my camper removed for an open bed) and fueled it was about 4,200 lbs. For for short trips like that being a few hundred lbs over my calculated max didn't worry me. As you note the frame was probably capable of 1 ton with dual rear wheels, my rear suspension wasn't stock (at that point it was up to 8 leafs). It's not something I would do every day for dozens of miles, but a few weekends in spring wasn't hurting anything.

 

Your truck have at it. The last two older ones I had were at about 300K too but I can tell you this at 1100# they are over maxed forget the springs how about the wheel bearings how about the tires no matter what you do a yard of gravel is going to be 2400 - 2900 pounds or 1400 or close to one ton overweight. Camper people put bodies on Toyota's and turned them into motorhomes the axles broke off at the radius of the axle not only did you lose the wheel you lost the brake drum with it, (and the rear brakes) it cost Toyota millions replacing the rears with 1 ton dually's and it really was not their fault.

 

Wasn't getting gravel, mostly soil and sand. Gravel is actually fairly light, around 0.8 tons/yard. Depending on what and how wet I would assume between 1.25 and 1.5 tons/yard so the front loader driver would dump until my chain touched the second link. First link was 1,350 lbs and the second link was where the second overload was fully engaged, so that was probably more like ~1,600 lbs. So it was between 1/2 and 3/4 yard in reality. I don't remember ever exceeding 6,000 lbs ever, so GVWR was violated on the order of ~650 lbs I'd think.

I've been running load range E tires for a number of years, currently in 235/85R16.

I guess I see lasting a quarter of million miles of hard use as a positive rather than something to wring my hands over what if. I'd never trust my Tacoma to go one pound over GVWR regardless of how it's sprung due to the weaker frame and axle housing and try to stay under it, but that old Pickup just didn't seem to care as much. It still had the original rear wheel bearings and axles when I sold it, although I'd replaced the outer seals when I built the 3rd members with Air Lockers. Toyota sure doesn't make them like they used to.

Like I said, it's not something I would suggest to do at highway speeds day-in, day-out. I wasn't hurting anything putting 10 or 20 miles a year on it at these weights.

 

I concur. I had a 2nd gen 6 speed for a few years. I put add a leafs on it because a cooler and a 5 gallon water jug would bottom out the springs. It suddenly shifted a lot smoother after that. I realized that the add a leafs greatly reduced axle wrap so the rear end wasn’t yanking on the driveline and transmission as much.

There’s no cure for the gear spacing, though. I like my 1st gen a lot more. It’s somehow better at both low-range and at freeway cruising.

 

I changed the trans fluid with Redline MT-90 along with putting back in the stock shifter bushing seat.
That has made big difference and got rid of the notchy shifting, which I'm sure was attributed to the Marlin Crawler shifter bushing seat. Not enough give with a delrin bushing.