OV Tune vs ECT PWR

I understand man. Everyone is different.

What gets me is that you, as well as everybody else here, had the chance to test drive the vehicle and make a decision on whether the vehicle was up to par or not.

By making the purchase, you agreed that the vehicle met or exceeded your demands.

Then for whatever reason, after the purchase, some take it upon themselves to talk down the truck. Making it seem as if Toyota “screwed up”.

Toyota didnt “screw up”, the truck works exactly as intended. It might not be the fastest vehicle out there BUT it will provide the owner many many years / miles of reliability, flexibility, fun and hard work.

In summary, all the complaining doesnt make much sense to me.

 

If you want to "defend" the Tacoma and it's tune, that's your call. Just don't try and convince others that they're nuts or tell them what to think when it comes to questioning Toyota's products.
Your posts wouldn't seem that way if you included "in my opinion" once and a while.

Anyway, you do you bro.

IN MY OPINION, Toyota did make mistakes with the 3rd gen. Is it a shitbox? Certainly not. Could it have been better. Hell yes.

 

My thoughts exactly. I'm willing to put up with shortfalls in order to benefit from Toyota's offroad capability and reliability, I just feel that they missed the mark on some easy wins.

 

Placebo effect

 

You sure got defensive, QUICK!

As soon as I pointed the “flaw” to your argument, you proceed to “attack” my opinion.

I mean, do I really need to put up a disclaimer for you, so that you know my statements are my opinions?

I would hope that anyone with any ounce of intelligence / reading comprehension would understand that already.

Do you really think you have the grounds to tell me what to do or not to do? Lol, come on bro.

Dont worry about the questions, bro. They were rhetorical.

 

Lol, ok man.

I'm not attacking anyone, and I've been around long enough to know when it's time to move on, lest I get drawn into an argument that will result in a vacation from this site.

As I've tried to say, your opinion is not worth more than mine or anyone else's on the internet.

I don't rag on ppl that like their trucks, in the same way I don't rag on ppl that don't.

You like yours stock, I like mine tuned. That's pretty much it.

Have a good one man, I've got cold beers in the fridge and another tune file incoming to try.

Cheers

And for all of you out there wondering what all the fuss is about - it's because Tacoma owners are passionate about their rides, one way or the other.
If yours is running great and fulfills all your needs, that's awesome! I'm truly glad your truck makes you happy, and I believe you 100%.

If there are things that perhaps you don't like about the way the truck drives from the factory, well there's a solution for that. I suggest you check out the OVtune threads, in particular the review thread. Then make your OWN decision.

 

Agreed on many points.

I will add that I have nothing against tuning. As I know from personal experience that proper tunes make a vehicle much more enjoyable.

Keep in mind thought, that any time you tune a vehicle for maximum performance, it accelerates the rate at which said vehicle wears (something to keep in mind for those that don’t know). Exactly how much, will depend on the aggressiveness of the tune / capabilities of the tuner. Not to mention the possibility of denial of warranty work for your power train, should anything fail.

Enjoy that beer and good luck with the new updated tune. Hopefully everything is ironed out for you.

Cheers

 

has anyone had any powertrain issues that ovtune voided the warranty?

 

That's a legitimate question for sure, and one everyone should consider before tuning their rig. All I can say is nobody on TW has reported a voided warranty due to OVtune. Believe me lol, It would be all over this site if someone did. To date, there are somewhere between 400 and 500 tuned 3rd gen V6 trucks in the wild.

Mat Wilson (the man behind the tune) has stated that Toyota's own security measures have prevented technicians (at least at the dealership level) from detecting the tune on our ECU's. You can take that for what it's worth, but a few tuned owners on here have been to the dealer for various reasons and nothing has been said/done to them - they left the tune on their ECUs during the dealer visit too.

Having said all this, I am thinking that if Toyota engineers wanted to look more closely at the ECM in a lab or monitor certain PIDs while driving a tuned truck they could figure out it wasn't stock. Lol, it runs/reacts quite differently! Proving it caused this failure or that may not be quite so black and white.

TL;DR version - I believe there is a certain degree of risk to tuning your truck when it comes to warranty issues. That's the truth as I see it.

Edit: I forgot to mention, you can flash your truck back to the stock file at any time. Takes about five minutes. The downer to that though, is if/when you flash back to the OV file the truck has to start it's learning process over again. I'm not speaking of the auto trans learning, I'm referring to things like knock correction, idle air flow etc etc etc.

 

I wonder whats worse, moderate throttle usage with OVtune vs me flooring it just to get it to shift into the proper gear for a given situation and then backing off?

 

Very unlikely at this point.

Couldn’t agree more.

 

no one complains about anything ever on tw.

 

Too many variables, man. Too many.

The truck as designed by Toyota, is sure to give you many many years of solid use / reliability.

You can do a tune and enhance the joy of the vehicle for the rest of your ownership without issues or you could do a tune and prematurely blow your motor or tranny.

I believe these trucks are solid, so you “should” be OK either way.

 

Agree/all.

Mat seems to be a very careful, thoughtful guy with a lot of patience and technical discipline/know-how. He has tried to re-assure everyone that the tune has been developed in such a way that it is "safe" for our engines. Nothing too drastic, just a number of enhancements across the board that add up to better driveability and some added HP/torque (additional power from the 91 octane tune only). You could look at it this way - it's not stressing out the engine by trying to squeeze the daylights out of every possible ounce of power. More like taking advantage of the power that the engineers left on the table. The same engine in the Camry and some Lexus vehicles purportedly makes noticeably more HP.

 

I think you might be on to something here by waiting for the warranty to expire before tuning

 

Could someone respond to my query earlier in this thread about how OV Tune impacts fuel efficiency compared with stock? Thanks.

 

You use 87, 87 is the equivalent to "regular" 91 is equivalent to "premium"

 

A tune could definitely improve fuel economy. Problem is the tune can be a lot of fun and due to too much fun with the loud pedal, you can definitely negate its effects.

 

If my driving habits don't change, how would using the ECT PWR button constantly impact fuel economy?

 

Hahaha night and day difference.