I miss my V-8 engine

Im about to finally be a v8 lol

 

ho. lee. shit. that is awesome! must have been a ton of work man.

 

When I was a geology student once upon a time I was driving my 2000 Frontier with the 3.3L six-banger. Load that tiny ass bed full of camping gear, a box full of textbooks, two bikes, and various rock specimens, and that truck definitely let you know it was suffering. There were a few hills in the southwestern US where I watched the speedo dismally and slowly sink below 50 despite having my foot on the floor. I remember watching my classmate who borrowed her dad's tundra walk away without any effort.

Now, 16 plus years later, my little Taco with its little 3.5 can pull a freaking camper over those same hills and have power to spare. It isnt nearly the biggest engine I have run, but for what it is I have been happy with what it puts down on the asphalt.

 

Just alot of little things. Luckily it's the same transmission so I only needed engine mounts.

 

nice. Is it finished? The only thing I really miss about my v8's is that rumble from the exhaust, you just can't get it out of the 3.5.

 

I came from a 4.7 v8 to a 2.7 4cyl taco. I feel your pain lol

 

It's almost done, still gotta mount all the cooling elements and finish up some other stuff.

Here's a short video from when I first got the key working and only some of the exhaust is hooked up. Won't lie though kinda like the way it sounds with open headers lol

 

Are you serious?...so 278 horsepower is not enough???......and it's not even Friday

 

OVTune is great for improving the low end power, but it is still an oversquare V6. The issue with highway inclines is the gearing. IIRC my taco with stock gears and 32's does about 1600rpm @ 70. Great for gas mileage, terrible for making power with that engine. For comparison, my 6.2 F350 does about 2200 at the same speed.

 

Yep, 4.88 or 5.29 - pick your ratio. To me, gears made my truck go from cool - to I can't wait to drive, even to work!

 

Planning on 4.88's since I finally decided not to go with bigger tires. Maybe I'm getting old but light weight and close to stock are sounding better all the time.

 

If I could take the 4.7 out of my '06 4Runner and magically put it into my '17 TRD Sport I would have the perfect truck.

 

As a comparison, my truck (3rd gen trd) with a shit load of steel armor, 35s and 5.29s does 2200 rpm at 70 (I dont know what the actual speed is fyi)

 

I feel your pain - coming from a 2015 Silverado 6.2 L w ma tow package . Rear diff + 480 HP went 0-60 ~ 6 seconds. It was a great, unreliable, truck. I am now on VFTune 2.0 - improved the situation but still no low end torque. I will probably go 4.88 gears next year and live with it.
If anyone has any first hand experience with a) prior V8 owner and b) 4.88's on 31-33" tires and c) VFTune or OVTUne please comment how close this combo feels like a V8

 

Yeah, engines have come a long way in even the last 10 years. My 1998 Mustang (V6) felt far less peppy than my I5 Canyon from 2008. My Taco doesn't feel quite as peppy off the line as my Canyon did, but it definitely performs much better at highway speeds in every category (smoothness, acceleration, and stability). None are any comparison to the 2017 Mustang 5.0 I rented a couple years ago, but that's more apples to oranges.

 

Where is the motor sourced from?

 

278hp is plenty, it's just how Toyota chose to deliver the power, with the automatic, that kind of sucks. If you were to believe C&D tests every other truck in the segment is quite a bit faster 0-60, 5-60, 30-50 etc. I doubt anyone really cares about those stats when looking to buy a midsize truck, but they are indicative of driveability and how engine/transmission work together.

 

They had to meet certain MPG requirements. It's much harder when the Tacoma sits up so high and doesn't have a giant front air dam (even the one that it does have isn't huge). So they nerfed the gearing.

 

It doesn't help that Toyota also overlooked some simple and proven systems to improve MPGs. E-fan and e-power steering assist are proven simple upgrades that would should improvements with little effort and maybe lead to more flexibility with gearing and programing.