Gear hunting? What am I missing?

I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this.

Apparently gear hunting is the devil and the only cure is our lord and savior KD max tune.

I've got 6k miles on my 2022 SR5 DC LB and I thought by now I would know what exactly I am supposed to be experiencing/hating but I don't. Maybe I'm just a special kind of stupid.

Misery loves company and I want to be outraged so I can fit in with all the other cool kids, so help a guy out here. What is gear hunting and how can I get my truck to do it?

 

Only one day to Friday and it's already ramping up...

 

Stop lugging low rpms! Don't pussyfoot the skinny pedal!

 

knock knock

Who's there?

6th gear

6th gear who?

*shift sound*

Hi, I'm 5th gear

 

It had occurred to me that maybe I just don't have a heavy enough foot. My last vehicle was a 4 cylinder 2011 Mercury Mariner, so anything is an improvement over that.

 

If you're hunting for gears, you are probably missing gears..

 

- - - - -
It is 10:13AM DTB (down the bayou) in Louisiana. I just cracked a beer and toasted in your directiion, sir. This is freaking HILARIOUS.

 

And you’re the first reply

 

I bought my 3rd gen a year ago and I also was wondering what was so bad about the transmission that had everyone griping. But I was just in VT and I understand now - in the hills and mountains it always seemed to want to downshift or upshift too early and then immediately regret its decision and go back and forth hunting for the perfect spot to be in but never really finding it. I am also light on the pedal and realized I needed to just punch it more going up the hills. Putting the ECT button on certainly helped.

 

Yea I picked a shitty day to wake up early...

 

I was up at 4 and hit the gym at 5.
Couldn’t sleep either..

 

IDK. I've found that the throttle can be a little slow to respond, but I guess I've adapted to it. The only "gear hunting" I've ever encountered was in driving around 30mph in ECT mode, where it seemed to stay overrevved in a lower gear for some reason. I don't use ECT anymore, so I haven't had an issue since.

 

I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

 

I do most of my driving in Metro STL and Illinois, where it's pancake flat. So maybe that's why I don't experience it.

 

I don't think it's a problem (on stock trucks), I've had it happen two times, and it was only when I was using cruise control on a windy uphill highway. I think people are not used to 6-gear transmissions anymore, combined with the need to right foot and use RPM on a small V6. Rev it out, you're not going to hurt the motor. It jumping around the fuel gears from 6-5 periodically isn't going to hurt anything either. My ford with a V8 and 6-gear auto shifts just as often on the same stretches of road. The stereo is louder, the window is down, I enjoy driving it.

 

So I have an Off-Road 4x4 and my boss has a 2WD SR5, both 2021's. I found the SR5 was much less annoying to drive in stock form - seemed to shift properly and the brakes also seemed to work better. Feels even better to drive after putting my take-off OR suspension and wheels/tires on it. But on my OR in completely stock form the brakes were scary bad as was the transmission programming (and these issues got 10000x worse after going to the larger tires). It's great now after pouring a bunch of money into it and I prefer it now that it's been tailored to my liking.. but it might just be that your specific model isn't annoying to drive. Maybe it's different because I don't regularly drive the SR5, but it doesn't piss me off like my OR has. If you're happy with the truck don't go looking for issues.

 

Oh for sure, don't get me wrong, I'm over the moon with this truck. It just seems like such a common issue I couldn't for the life of me figure out what everyone is talking about so like an idiot I had to go and ask.

 

IMO 99% of the people on TW would have never given a thought to how their truck shifts if they hadn’t been heavily influenced to think there’s a problem and then go out of their way to try to seek it out. The first few years had worse factory trans programming than the last few years for sure. But I know a bunch of people with Tacomas who aren’t on TW, and not a single one of them has any complaints with how their truck shifts whatsoever… because no one has put the idea into their heads.

 

I grew up owning too many 1.6 VW Diesels.