OTT…is there a downside?

that’s why you don’t get max sensitivity to open throttle all the way by breathing on it.

no tune on a regular motor is gonna magically hot V twin turbo add 300 horse. Not what it’s for and not the same price.

 

I’ve had many different throttle sensitivities. Even the less sensitive options are like that. But you have a 2nd gen anyways, which is not the same as how a 3rd gen reacts. Apples and oranges, and this thread is for 3rd gens because that’s what the poster has.

And no, of course not, I never said I expect a tune to make it into a twin turbo nor add 300 horsepower. All I said was I didn’t feel much of a torque increase and I explained why I think that.

 

I mean up to you. I take the dyno at its word. Lots of positive reviews. Running mild don’t think it’s worth trying less. But that’s just me right now.
maybe you guys have more capability with that ECT button feature that my truck doesn’t have.
Felt better afterward. Haven’t tested MPG but it’s not an MPG truck.

 

Like I said, I’m sure there is probably some torque increase (because the dyno says so), I just don’t really notice it.

No ECT here, I have the stick. 5 mph in 2nd gear, slam the gas to the floor and it just completely bogs and barely picks up speed. Pitiful.

 

I mean I gotta ask. That’s any vehicle.

why slam the gas to the floor in 2nd gear at 5mph?
5mph is 1st gear speed not 2nd gear speed

Unless you’re taking care of the synchros by avoiding downshifting into 1st which understandable

but yeah even then it’s gonna take some time to wind it out some more RPM where you’ve got more power based on where the RPM is, and rolling. Gear ratio plays a part supposedly even more so on 3rd gen than 2nd gen. I’ve heard the ratios are pretty tall.

You can check online what power comes when. For example some cars peak torque available 1600rpm. If they are direct injected with tiny turbo that is on.


say you had a supercharger. You’d probably have power available near idle. But that’s a supercharger doing that.

I know some people start in 2nd in snow but when I lived in CO never did that.

 

I’m guessing you haven’t driven a 3rd gen manual. There are times where you’re creeping in 2nd and want to pick up speed quickly. It won’t do it. Sure you can drop to 1st but if you’re already moving, that’s not always great, especially if you need to get moving quickly…that downshift kind of sucks and doesn’t really go quickly.

I’ve driven many manuals. This is the only one that doesn’t really go when you ask it to. Tuned or not. Even my super weak 3.0 Ranger had more immediate pickup. Cable throttle, but I’ve driven plenty of other electric throttle manuals that were pretty much immediate. Where with the Tacoma, you hit the gas and it just slowly starts picking up speed. I don’t think the 4.0 in the 2nd gen was like that, but I haven’t driven one.

The final ratios are about the same between 2nd and 3rd gen. They are very different in the trans and diffs but they end up about the same, very close when multiplied. 2nd is very tall, so is 3rd. Regear makes both of them a whole lot better, but it still bogs down immediately when you demand any decent acceleration from it at low speed.

 

Good post. Right to the point.

 

I’m not trying to be a Debbie downer here but unless you have a super high torque v8 or a turbo charged engine , your not supposed to have power like you describe in second gear at 5 MPH . What do you think your driving ? That’s the reason to have a manual . It’s called drop down to first gear . The truck is heavy , it’s a regular v6 , I don’t understand what people ,want or even why they would want to speed around in a Tacoma. If I want to go fast it’s going to be on a bike, or a all out low to the ground car built to do so . I drive my truck daily and wonder what the problem is , nothing at all, but then I realize and see how fast people drive in the morning and understand . They are in a rush I guess to get to work , or get to no where. This truck is not a high performance vehicle, the more you mess with things the more issues you have .

 

I came from a frontier with a regular V6. It was nothing like this at all. It’s gearing was a teeny bit better than a stock Tacoma but otherwise they were pretty close. The frontier had tons of response down low while the Tacoma has nothing.

I’m not coming up with this out of nowhere. Again, I’ve driven many manuals and this is the only one like this that basically just shuts down if you ask anything of it down low. There is no good reason it should bog down as bad as it does at low speed. I don’t need it to be a high performance vehicle, but it’s pretty pathetic when a 3.0 Ranger has more balls and throttle response down low. Up high the Tacoma smokes it, but at low speed it’s pretty bad.

 

Not really, he doesn’t drive a 3rd gen manual. Neither 2nd gen manuals or 3rd gen autos are like this, anyone driving any of those will not understand. The auto has its own bag of problems but they aren’t the same problems the manual faces at low speed.

 

The auto's are worse. Having a 3.90 rear end ratio exacerbates this problem. Another annoyance is that some genius at Toyota thought it would be a good idea to have 2 overdrive gears, so the difference in engine speed between 4th and 5th is over 1000 RPM. This engine is completely useless below 3000 RPM, so when the transmission shifts to 5th, you have no useable power. (probably also an altitude problem, Im sure it's not as bad at sea level). For comparison, my wife had a 2018 Highlander with the same engine. No dead spots in the throttle, transmission was always in the right gear, plenty of power. Sure, the Highlander weighs less than the Taco, but really it seems the problems mostly lie with the calibration. The OTT tune is an improvement, but not a significant one. I guess its time for 5.29's and a Supercharger.

 

The autos aren't really worse....they are in other areas, but not down low. The torque converter makes up for the 3.90 rear end. I just had a loaner for nearly two weeks and got plenty of time in the seat. Trust me, after day 3 I wanted the thing gone, but for other reasons, like the shifting on the highway. The downshifts I don't mind. What I could not stand is that it downshifts and then immediately upshifts again 3 seconds later while still under the same conditions that caused it to downshift to begin with. Still heading up the hill, don't upshift yet. Just dumb.

At low speed, like creeping at 5 mph, I had 0 complaints like I do in the manual. Seriously, the manual just slowly starts to lumber on when you get on it. The auto actually goes at least.

All that said, 5.29s are great and I'm sure the supercharger would be great as well. I can't justify the SC cost and I have seen a few people who had problems after a while with the SC so I will be passing on that one. It is what it is at this point.

 

Maybe because I drive a 05 Corolla with almost 300 K miles as a beater car I don’t notice too much bad stuff . When I get in my truck it feels like a rocket. It’s all relative . Being a teen in the 80’s 200 HP was big HP out of a 8 cylinder . Trust me , this truck rips if you compare it to those days. I had a 1977 trans am that had a 400 cubic inch V8 that had 170 hp. No a 4 cylinder NA engine has that much power . We have all gotten spoiled .

 

I agree with everything you say…but I also have a 6MT so maybe an AT owner can tell me how to feel, correctly?

OP, tune helps the feels. Maybe some real improvement but it’s small and the truck is a pig. I honestly would go AT if I were to do it all over, torque converter can help mask the torque issue quite a bit better, I’d imagine..

 

When my driveshaft was getting fixed, I had an auto loaner for almost 2 weeks. The torque converter definitely helps make it feel like it has more torque down low. However, I was sick of the thing after a couple days. The funny thing is, the downshifting doesn’t bother me. It goes into 6th at highway speeds, which is fine. When you hit a hill or wind, it downshifts…to 5th. Which is also fine. If the hill or wind is bad enough, it may choose to go down to 4th even. That’s not too bad either, except like 3 seconds later it tries 6th again. It should be smart enough to realize the throttle requirements to maintain speed have not let up yet, so don’t try up shifting yet. It does this repeatedly until the conditions like the wind or hill let up and then it realizes it can hold 6th again.

It also wants a hell of a lot of throttle from the driver when you’re not in cruise control and trying to speed up to pass or something. You pretty much give it 80% throttle to get it to drop to 3rd, at which point it really wants to go but then it redlines and goes to 4th with significantly less acceleration.

so overall I’d say the auto actually felt better to me than the manual down low, none of the obnoxious bogging down when you give it gas at low speeds, but overall the general drive of the auto was pretty infuriating to me. Overall I’m very interested in the 4th gen manual as a potential upgrade from any 3rd gen transmission quirk.

The good thing on the auto is you have decent control with the S mode and ECT PWR helps the shifting to delay a bit for a bit better acceleration. However, I find that manually controlling an automatic is just a chore. If it’s automatic, I want it to be automatic. A manual you have to shift, that’s just plain a given and you know what to do based on the throttle feel in each gear. With an auto, you can limit gears but it’s just not the same and while you can control it decently for a desired outcome, the whole experience is just quite disappointing.

 

I think you analyze wayyy too much stuff lol. I get in my truck, turn on the radio with some good classic rock music , and do what I need to do with it that day, be it work or fun . It seems totally fine to me . Honestly before this forum I didn’t even know people had complaints like this . As for the 4 th Gen . I test drove one it does feel more powerful. But it’s too new yet , and really all cars and trucks theses days are getting too expensive to just change because. I will drive mine too 200 k + and be just fine like all my Toyota trucks .

 

I don’t analyze too much. I came from a truck that felt way better to drive and cost significantly less. Unfortunately that truck was a POS in other ways, otherwise for the performance I would have preferred it over this truck big time. Overall the Tacoma has been a better vehicle so I live with the lethargy. If you are truly pleased with your truck’s performance, that’s good, but it is a bummer when an 18 year old truck model smokes your fancy new truck.

I don’t like to chalk things up to “it’s a truck, it should be slow.”

 

This thread makes me happy, or rather keeps me happy, with my 2nd-gen 2014 4.0L 6MT. Stock-size tires, no regearing, no SC.

Yes, OTT-tuned, on a "mild" variety, and very satisfied with it. I have 500 lbs of extra crap fixed to my truck and it still feels adequately-fast at any speed range and in any gear, as long as the RPMs are >1700 or so.

I've been running OTT for about 15K miles / 2 years now. Since I did a self-tune (flashed it myself with my own HPtuners MPVI2 interface,) I could easily flash it back to stock for comparison. I'll do that sometime soon & see if the stock tune is as bad as I remembered.

 

I’m pretty disappointed with the tune on my 23’ LBDC. I have issues that I just can’t seem to get use to. Throttle at times just has a delay and then kicks in and it feels hard on the trans. Like the pedal doesn’t respond in certain areas of the pedal travel and when it does it accelerates aggressively not smooth all the way through the ideal distance. Seems very un-natural. If I let off the throttle at slower speeds and then reapply the throttle there is a delay before it kicks back in. Sometimes it’s awkwardly long before it kicks in and shifts pretty hard when it does. Like I’m learning to drive a stick shift. Frustrating to say the least. I also feel like when I step on it I get a very jumpy acceleration and not smooth all the way up the rpms. Shifting just seems all or nothing. I originally had mild/medium and thought all my tune issues were maybe because I had too sensitive of a pedal for slower speeds and switched to lite/medium. Problems are still there. Honestly I liked mild/medium better cause I feel like at least with a little more sensitivity in the throttle I could get out of those first few gears little quicker but it still all feels awkward. I may switch back just to favor around town driving more cause at slower speeds this is not working out at all and feels worse then stock.

 

I work around my slush bucket shift points by using a combination of HCT and selective shift restricted to 4, with 5 and 6 locked out around town.

The 3.5L engine is typical Japanese overbore with a 1.13 to 1 big bore, short stroke ratio with a torque peak at 4,600 rpm.
As such, it wants to wind up higher to achieve its power range.

As such, I don't expect it to have much at all if you mash the pedal at low rpm.
Same as Japanese bikes... they want to wind up before they get with the program.

The Nissan 3.8L mentioned above is a bit larger engine, and has a lower overbore ratio of 1.08 to 1 with a torque peak at 4,400 rpm.

Compare this with the Cummins B-Series which an underbore design with a 0.86 to 1 long stroke ratio.
Torque peaks at 1,600 rpm.
Yes, apples and oranges, and for different purposes.

I rode Harleys for years, because I wanted the low end grunt.

My interest in the OTT is purely for the additional torque down low, as shown on their dyno tests.
The transmission shift point hassles are my penance to bear for not being able to find a manual transmission model when I was ready to buy.
I won't buy any tune until CARB certified... don't want that problem at all.