I need a little 2015 performance advice

Just recently lifted my truck and put some 33s on it. There was a pretty noticeable difference in fuel mileage. My question is whats the best things to do to my truck to help improve that a little and maybe give it a little extra power. Programmer? Cold air intake? Cat back exhaust systems? Not wanting to throw down a ton of money on performance but willing to do a little for sure! What do you guys recommend?

 

Unfortunately, mpg is the price for bigger tires. No way to increase your mileage unless you want to go back to 265's. Re-gearing will give you back your low end torque. None of the other stuff you mentioned will work.

 

Regearing, easy on throttle and keep tires inflated. That should help your mileage.

 

Yeah I'm not too worried about the mileage. Just thought id give it a shot if i could help it out a little at least.

 

I'm in the same boat. What gear would be best for 33" tires? 4.56 has been mentioned before in other threads.

 

Regearing for low end torque.Everything else you mentioned will not give you sufficient satisfaction.Sweet Tacoma by the way Jordan(OP)!

 

I was hearing 4.88s for regearing. I've got 35s and looking to regear as well

 

I'm not an expert on re-gearing as I've only done one car though I would say 4:56 for 33's and 4:88 for 35's. My 1st gen has 4:10 gears and it was sufficient with 33's.

 

regearing for torque application at lower RPM will work, at a further expense of MPG.

Old muscle cars (aka The Judge) often came with 4.33s stock, and I've run a few with both 4.56 and 4.88s. It is not highway friendly gearing, even with modern OD transmissions. And GearVendors does not make an auxillary OD for our trucks.

Also, make sure you recalibrate the speedo/odo when you are all done, so you can accurately calculate MPG. You're already a bit off kilter.

 

Depends on AT or MT. My opinion is 4.56 for a MT on 35s.

 

Why would regearing hurt the mpg even more? Isn't the taller effective ratio by the 33 inch tires what made it go down? With 4.10s and 33s he should be close to stock rpm range, which should put his mileage back except for the fact the engine is turning more weight further from the axle? So if I'm right which I may very well be wrong, his mileage should be worse than stock and better than it is now.

I want 4.10s on my 265/75/16s. It should make acceleration easier and the rpms would only be a couple hundred higher so I don't think the mpg would drop too much, I don't go over 60-70 anyway.

 

Yes, you are very correct regarding the 'effective' gear ratios. And the closer the overall tire package (weight, rolling resistance) is to OE (in everything but diameter) the more accurate this concept is. But in the practical terms it's not easy to implement.

Now that lift is added, more unsprung weight, more rolling mass, more throttle is needed to move and/or maintain. Even deeper gears, which will help the get it moving part, still don't exactly offset the other changes. And even with the calculated final gear correction, those other negatives are still at play when up in the cruising range, which is where the best MPG normally comes.

Everything we do in a vehicle that changes it is some form of compromise to another area of the vehicle. If you try to 'elevate' the entire package performance you generally kinda rebuild the whole vehicle

I'm no professional for sure, and learn stuff all the time. And I know even less about trucks. But my misspent youth of successful drag racing muscle cars combined with my misspent 50's wrenching and shoeing lightweight, high strung SoloII cars gave me some taste for how easy it was for me to mess things up.

Here's a simple 'on paper' example. There are a few on line 'top speed' calculators. Enter a few measurable factors and it will tell you an estimated top speed. The factors are accurate and the math is correct. But most do not allow for the drag coefficient of a specific vehicle (which most of us don't know anyway). And it also assumes the vehicle can hit ECU redline (fuel cut) in high gear. In many cases, particularly light weight small displacement high RPM sports cars, there is simply not enough torque to overcome the Cd and get within reach of redline. So the paper is wrong.

The whole compromise concept shows why it's a good idea to know exactly what one wants a vehicle to be able to do, and understand what one may be giving up to accomplish that, before one starts buying parts. Saves a lot of time, money and grief.

 

1. Intake spacer
2. Intake or drop in filter
3. cat back or just change muffler
4. Tuner
That is stage 1... you will need a tuner and know how to tune or have a shop to make the mods work, but you will pick up tons of power.... you will also need 2 maps a MPG map and a power map.... I can adjust from 18 mpg to 16 mpg but 0-60 will go from 8.2 to 7.05 , so on the 4.0 you get either power or mpg it's hard to get both, but I'm still tuning....

I currently have the maf cal from urd and I have a unichip on the way..... The 4.0 only runs at 22 deg of timing and that's way to low so I hope to pick up more power and have multiple maps...

 

^Agreed.

OP, if you don't care much about MPG but want to regain power, I'd say 4.56 gears will do you well to regain stock power and if you ever move up to 35w, those gears should serve you fine as well. If you really wanna blow some money, get an SC along with your gears and I bet you'll be happy with your truck. Don't buy any snap oil spacers, and as far as I know, there aren't currently any "chips" that actually work on our trucks. A good exhaust and intake might net you an extra 15ish HP, but don't quote me on that.

 

He has a 2015, no UCON for us lol