The joys of towing - 10mpg!

I just picked up a new toy about 250 miles from my house.
My dad offered me his one ton diesel but I wanted to see how the Taco would handle the load. I gotta say the old girl did pretty well with the 5,700 lbs although the tongue weight was a concern at first. I just monitored the rear tire pressures, took my time, and all was well. I got about 12 MPG with my six speed manual.

But I gotta say: the supercharger sure came in handy.

 

Ewff, that rear sag is terrible

 

Sure was. And it didn't help that I've got my truck leveled.

 

Yup my truck sags like that too, so I’m looking into sumo springs/timbres to help it not sag as much

 

Does anybody make air shocks anymore?

That may be a good option for me given the infrequency of my need to tow things.

 

Question and comments:
1. What is the ECT? Is it a setting or an add-on. I have a 2023 TRD Off-road V6.

Comments
1. For towing, I have a 1996 Dodge 3/4 ton diesel with manual transmission. Keeping it at 1800 RPM on relatively flat roads puts it at about 62 to 65 mph, and delivers 16 mpg with a 23 foot travel trailer. I've towed much heavier and the truck loves it. So for towing, buy enough truck.
2. I have not yet tried towing with my Tacoma. But I didn't buy it for its prowess at towing. Mountain driving is annoying, as the transmission is seriously indecisive, even choosing S-4.
3. For off-topic comparison, I used to pull a 19 foot travel trailer with a 360 V8 and 3 speed torqueflyte. Under some conditions, I'd have to drive in second just to keep up 55 mph. Fuel economy, if I could call it that, was 5 mpg with gusts to 6, on 91 octane gasoline. That was after converting to an AMC dual plane intake and motorcraft 4350 4 barrel carb. With the original 2 barrel carb, it was worse.

 

Electronically Controlled Transmission Power. Pic of the button below. Basically it's like a tow haul button that tells the transmission to hold gears longer to keep it in the power band.

 

I didn't use the air bags (too lazy plus they were kinda leaky at the second tow) if ya wanna see some sag...



But y'know the Taco can do all that too.

 

Towing 5900 pounds at 70 mph. In heavy traffic. That's pretty idiotic. You did inform us though that you're not an independent thinker, rather, you wanna do 70 cuz everyone else doing 70. Classic groupthink. Undoubtedly everyone else doing 70 wasn't towing 5900 pounds in a midsize truck. You should be thankful you weren't following equally idiotic drivers or your next post would have been complaining about the tacoma's terrible brakes cuz it didn't stop in 60 feet like the other passenger cars.

 

There is nothing wrong with the transmission. The engine is the problem. That engine needs 4600 rpm to get max torque. The transmission needs to shift gears a lot in order to have enough rpm's for power.

The older 2md gen trucks were still problematic needing 3600 rpm to generate power. But the new 4th gens get their power closer to 2500 rpm.

 

Just skimmed through this thread and all I can say is, wow, I must have done something wrong with my 6MT DCSB when I towed a 12x6 tandem axle U-Haul with the cab, bed, and trailer all loaded to the gills with book boxes, tools, heavy metal shelving, and heavy furniture; the trip started in central New Hampshire (not exactly flat), went through western Massachusetts, then on through the Hartford area toward Scranton before heading south into the DC area. In total about 600 miles, at least 40% of it was quite hilly; my average moving speed was between 65 and 70 mph and yet my fuel mileage was just a hair over 15 MPG using 5th gear as my top gear. Maybe it was the small/granular nature of the load which allowed me to keep the tongue weight to just under 100 pounds, which in turn didn't amount to much observable squat at all, but I was delighted with the fuel economy.

 

That's about what my experience was towing a 6x12 trailer loaded with about 4K lbs from Oregon to So. Calif. Although my MPG was more in the range of 13-14 (maybe because being lifted and 34" MT tires). Only place mine tends to struggle is trying to get going from a stop on a steep incline (requires much more RPM and feathering the clutch than my old 4.0L V6 Ford Ranger did). But that aside, I'm good with it.