Gas Hog?

Regardless of opinion, driving carefully isn't going to hurt a cold engine as opposed to idiling a cold engine for 10 minutes.

 

Sometimes you just have to let it idle and warm up before driving because it's that cold.

 

Its an interesting story to say the least with my issue. I was freaked out at such a low mileage to have knock/pinging and thought something was really wrong with the motor. So the moment I heard the first ping/knock I set up an appointment with Toyota to have it looked at while still under the manufacturer warranty. Their solution was a TSB to do something with the ECU. They were very vague on what this TSB included and after speaking with several tech's even they didn't have any details on what exactly they were doing when they hooked up their equipment. All of them explained they simply apply the file from Toyota and the problem will be solved. My feeling with altering the factory ecu settings was it was going to retard timing on the motor therefore reducing power slightly to prevent pre-detonation. I decided to try higher octane as a substitute rather than having Toyota perform the TSB and went directly to 93 OCT. I also at the gas station while filling up on my first tank of 93 OCT unhooked my negative terminal on the battery and sat for about 10 - 15 mins allowing the ECU to lose its memory. I hooked the battery back up, got the typical hard to start issue after disconnecting the battery followed by the low idle (this is normal on Tacoma's for anybody who has never unhooked/changed their battery).

I then drove about 45 miles to our shop where I had to hook up a trailer and pull it to downtown Austin to load up some solid wood doors. The trailer I pulled was a 16 ft. single axle all steel trailer. I can't give exact weight of the trailer but you can feel it when its hooked up to the truck with no material/stuff loaded on it. Anyways, the knock was gone. I purposely before picking up a load of solid wood doors floored it getting onto the highway and had no knock in the higher RPM like I did before. So I ran through that tank of gas, filled up again with 93 OCT and still could not get it to knock in the high RPM like I could before. I then decided to take it back to the dealer and talked with the service adviser and a few techs that I spoke with previous explaining my situation. At that point 3 of the tech's all agreed the higher OCT is doing its job and that if they want me to do the TSB they would so I could use 87 OCT, but they had learned more or less from performing the TSB on other trucks, the file they flashed (apologies if this is the incorrect termonology for Toyota's, I'm used to VW tuning) would basically do what I suspected, retard timing and thus reduce power slightly to prevent knock / pre-detonation. I'm at 132,xxx miles as of tonight and have not had a single knock since I was at 39,xxx miles. I run Shell or Chevron gas on every tank and as previously mentioned I run a fuel cleaner every few tanks. My company pays for gas but even if they didn't I'd still pay for the higher OCT since it seems to have fixed my knocking issue.

 

Gotchya! Whatever works... The TSB updates the computer (what are trucks are, driving computers), so I would always get the TSB flash. My truck had one for transmission shifting issues... it was one for all Tacomas of that year, nothing personal! My truck has shifted fine since, but really good shifting after Crom replaced my tranny fluid at (about) 88,000 miles!

 

Below zero with good synthetic in the engine you don't need extended warmup. You can hear when the valves stop rattling, that means you have oil flow. With good synthetic that requires about 5 seconds. Fool around with whatever you like for another 10 seconds, then get going slowly.

Get going slowly because the drivetrain needs some warmup even with synthetic in the drivetrain. Those with manuals know how that is, you can feel the hard shifts below zero even with synthetic.

 

This! Current oils, especially synthetics, not only flow faster they have better adhesion the metal after the engine stops. Once you have sufficient oil pressure (I miss my '93's oil pressure gauge) you can start driving, somewhat gently at first. This also helps with warming the engine more quickly reducing the amount of rich condition fuel blowing past past the cold rings and into the crankcase. You are actually doing harm to your engine with a static warm up.

 

Bull. I get 12.8 MPGs at 80MPH. Every damn time. Super awesome good mileage.