Safe ambient air temperature

I have had my truck sitting and idling for hours before to use the bed outlet to run a rotary hammer for work. Middle of the day in DT Los Angeles. It was pretty warm, high 90s. Didn't have any issues.

 

Thanks for the responses. I think I'm convinced it isn't going to be an issue. I just was bothered by the fact that the alarm kept going off on the UG. Made me a bit nervous

 

Don't be bothered by the alarm for 4k+ RPM sustained when towing or in the mountains too. That one blips all... the... time... when I'm towing. You have to rev up the motor in the 3rd gen to get power, so don't be worried about that one either, and just send it with that skinny pedal. The engine's up to the task.

One more, I'm in Atlanta, so my Ultragauge also alarms in midsummer from heat if I park in the sun. That temp alarm is from the actual temperature of the UG itself. It hasn't melted yet, and I've had my UG for 6 years. When it's REALLY hot, the gauge will light up and be almost fully backlight - you'll barely be able to see the screen. I've only had that happen a few times during heat waves.


My only gripe with the UG is that you can't update the firmware. Mine's old enough that it won't read transmission temps on the Taco, and that is the main thing I wish it did with how much I tow. I've halved my interval for trans fluid changes because of how nasty my fluid was at the 30k change. I'm not sure if the nastiness was from offroading - the auto trans - specifically the torque converter - works really hard offroad in 4lo, or if the nastiness was from all the towing I do. Either way, having insight on those temperatures is good, so I'd watch those more instead of your MPG since the MPG is in the middle of your gauge cluster.

 

Yeah transmission pan and TC temps are pretty much the main reason I got the UG! Thanks for the tips!

 

OP lost me at MX

 

What do you mean? The MX variant is the programmable one.

 

Just toss the gauge. It will drive you nuts and youll spend more time staring at it than the road and end up wadding up your truck. Its a Toyota truck. The 4 and 6cyl are about as close to bulletproof as youre going to get.

Just drive the damn thing and keep eyes on the road.

 

Also, Tacomas arent high performance engines. Intake air temp is basically a pointless metric.

 

Finally someone with some common sense. Drive the damn truck!!

 

I think you guys are blowing this out of proportion. I wanted to understand why the alarm was triggered: whether it was the UG being wrong or whether I had a potential issue. Neither is a big deal. I don’t stare at the thing while I drive. I bought it solely to monitor transmission temps off road. That is not something you can monitor without a scanner tool and is something that you absolutely should monitor when you’re pushing the vehicle.

 

99.9% of Tacoma owners who even take the truck offroad dont push it hard enough to ever worry about trans temps.

 

No harm in monitoring to be safe...

 

The only time I worried about it was when I was towing a camper. I used the Torque app and an OBDII thingie. The temperatures occasionally spiked but quickly dropped. Once I saw how it behaved, I really just stopped worrying about it.