New to the Taco world, help steer me in the right direction..

As the title states, I'm new and in the market for my first tacoma.
I'm coming from the ford ranger world and making the jump over to an undeniably better truck in many aspects. I'm sure a lot of people on here made the same jump.

I was originally looking into getting into a first gen tacoma as that was what my budget allowed, but after an long overdue job promotion, I decided I would go for a 2nd gen. I've done a lot of reading on this forum and there is a lot of good information but sometimes it can be overwhelming info for a newbie.

Basically I need a crash course on what to look for on a 2nd gen truck when going car shopping.
I'm mechanically inclined and work on all my cars myself so Im not afraid to turn a wrench, just looking for insight from owners as to some known issues to look for etc, anything you'd like to throw my way for me to consider and help me in making the right purchase decision.

I'm also torn between the 6cyl and 4cyl models. I have a 4L V6 ranger right now and I couldn't imagine having any smaller of a motor in it (not even the 3L V6, let alone the base 2.5L 4cyl..) as I do a lot of highway driving and keeping up with traffic/merging etc is hard enough with the 4L V6.
How do the tacoma motors fair? I like the idea of better fuel mileage of the 4 cyl but a lot of times, its deceiving because a 4cyl has to work harder to pull its weight at highway speeds, and fuel mileage isnt any better than the 6cyl..

Thanks in advance