I spent about half the day with a Toyota Engineer who designed 2nd gen! How was your day? :)

Life is crazy, you never know from day to day who you will meet. At about 10:00 this morning I met one of the Toyota engineers that worked on the design for the 2nd gen Tacomas. He started out as a design engineer for Porche and when he left Germany he started working for Toyota. He actually built and designed his own 911. He was part of the original design team for the 1st gen Tundras. He said, basically, the Tundra project was a last minute attempt to compete with the US full size truck market. There target was to compete with the Ford F150. They deemed the F150 as owning the largest portion of the market that they could compete with. They were given hardly anytime to get it into production. As we all know the Tundra did not turn out that way. When Toyota (internally) announced the the Tundra was basically a complete failure he joined the Tacoma design team working with TRD in early 2000's until he retired in 2007.

I spent about 4 hours with him talking! LOL, I could tell he REALLY loved his job! The conversation started when I mentioned my head gaskets... and his eyes perked up and questions and answers and comments and conversation just started rapidly coming.

Like we all suspected the head gasket design flaw was discovered by Toyota and it is a recognized problem. He also said that only manufacturer owned dealerships actually did the replacement as a 'semi-recall' of sorts and since there are only a few in the US we got screwed. Franchise owned/privately owned dealerships were not authorized to do the replacement under a 'recall' basis. He also mentioned that if there are any left in the US, a manufacturer owned dealership will honor most TSB repairs as a 'recall' repair if you complain enough to the service dept. But he was not sure if there were any left in the US. If anyone discovers one, please post!!!!

I showed him the lab results from Blackstone, he saw the potassium levels... immediately asked if the dealership machine the block and the heads. I said yes they machines the heads. He asked about the block? I said no. He said with these levels there are most likely fishers in the block that is where your coolant is leaking in. You have to machine the block also are it wont be perfect. He also admitted because the release date for the 2nd gen was supposed to be in Sept. 2004 and they were way behind schedule pressure was put on them to start production.

I also told him that after the head gaskets were replaced I had the dealership do pressure testing. He said those test are useless with this problem. The proper Toyota test is way more involved and he went into details that I honestly don't understand, but basically, a tech sits there all day with it running with something hooked up monitor specs. I am for sure going to get more details and write it all down before I go back and complain about work done to my truck!

Some more interesting fun facts...

TRD did design a twin turbo for the 4.0 TRD ONLY 4.0 engines for the 2ng gen. Tacomas. In tests it performed extremely well! He said they are even a few test production trucks roaming around Japan. The reason they scrapped the turbo was because the cost to the consumer would have been at least double that of the supercharger and the powers that be in Toyota decided the price would be too high for the American market!

To elaborate on this comment above... "4.0 TRD ONLY 4.0 engines" ... TRD designed 2nd gen. Tacoma 4.0 engine blocks are in fact slightly different than the none TRD blocks from the factory. Also the OEM pistons and several other internal parts are different than non-TRD 4.0's when shipped from the factory. The differences are at the micrometer level in order to create extremely high tolerances vs the none TRD 4.0 engines. So parts are technically interchangeable and unless. I forgot to ask how you get OEM TRD parts, next time I talk to him I will.

As far as tuning to gain horsepower... On a TRD 4.0 in the 2nd gens there is not much you can do. TRD pushed the limits on tolerances on the internals, a better air intake is about all you can do and that gain is minimal. Slight mods to exhaust yield VERY VERY minor increases in HP in rare cases. Major mods to exhaust usually have a negative effect.

ECU programming... not a good idea. On TRD editions they pretty much tuned it to peak.

There was so much to digest and so much I am probably forgetting, but I had to share. He is actually one of my customers now so we will be talking on a regular basis.

How cool is that Today was a good day!

 

Sweet jesus

 

My day was alright. Trying to figure out what to gif next.

 

Wow... impressive.

Definite sub for more random facts

 

my day was shit but this post is legit

 

Oh, another fun fact. He said they tested just about ever type of engine oil on the 4.0 engines. AmSol performed the best. Under test, after running each oil under normal conditions for extended periods of time they would run lab tests periodically. Then after a certain length of time they would completely drain the engines of oil and let them run until they seized. Amsol test engines took over 8 hours to seize. I USED to use Mobil1, LOL!

 

Impressive..........memory you have there.

 

Feels kinda sticky in here. Nice.

 

Wow, that's awesome, subbed!!

 

Performance wise, there is plenty you can do. Trust me.

 

Soooo....the trd 4.0 is a different engine than a base model.

 

That's super cool! That guy probably knows a metric f*ck ton of stuff about these rigs that you'd never be able to find out online.

 

basically... yes. Parts are interchangeable and the engine will run, but tolerances on TRD parts are higher, so using non TRD internals will affect total performance.

 

I don't want to badger him. But, if we can compile some specific questions I can ask him.

 

Just curious, what you do for work to meet him?

 

keep it coming, keep digging his brain.

 

Damn
Thanks for sharing.

How'd you discover he worked for Toyota?

 

Now that's what I'm talking about

 

Ask him why the Fuck I've only got a two speed wiper? My 75 ford was two speed and no change for 2012. Other than that it's pretty cool you got to talk to him.