This Forbidden Tacoma Diesel Is The Truck You Want, But Toyota Won't Build!

Yeah a smelly truck that makes too much noise

 

A couple things that come to my mind when I saw this and then checked out Diesel Toys to find the cost to do a 1st gen. One, in this particular case, the guy had a bunch of very good and valuable parts left over to offset his cost of the swap. Certainly not going to come close to the normal extra $5K diesel option for most domestic trucks being sold in USA today. Second, it shouldn't take anywhere near 120 hours of labor for this swap, given that this company specializes in doing this type of work all the time. They are obviously raping the customers and only the filthy rich (like this guy) would be dumb enough to pay that kind of labor cost. Unfortunately there are too many filthy rich dumb people that have shifted the cost of this type of thing out of the reach of the people who really need and want it.

And then the reason you would want/need this. Gas mileage will improve (but offset by the expensive fuel), but that low end torque will turn much larger tires at lower rpm. This allows the fuel economy to increase while making a lifted truck with big tires much more derivable without re-gearing, specifically off road where the gobs of extra torque will really come in handy. Towing will improve. And maintenance cost will even out or be lower than a gasser if you're driving it for several hundreds of thousands of miles, which I typically do with my vehicles.

All said, Diesel Toys is way overpriced for this conversion IMO. Especially when it comes to doing a 1st gen.

 

Because the price tag would exceed 50 grand...

 

I am in love with my '09 PreRunner, but it does annoy me that you can go over the border into Mexico and buy a HiLux with a diesel all day long. But you can't get the exact same truck (Tacoma) in the US with anything but a gasser. Given the way Tacoma drivers love their trucks, sure would be nice to have the longevity and low operating cost of a Toyota diesel motor under the hood.

 

Yeah, a $60,000 noisy, smelly SR5. If torque in a Tacoma and being wealthy enough to be able to blow a huge wad of cash on that is your fetish, it’s probably a rad turn-on. But I’m not into that sort of thing.

 

Man, I understand some truck owners wanting a diesel option, but I just hated having to deal with them. I lived through the diesel Corolla, Camry, and truck bitd and it wasn't very enjoyable from the service side. I was perfectly comfortable referring inquiring customers that needed full-size diesel trucks to Chevy or Ford.
The Toyota diesel vehicles offered were painful slow taking off from a dead stop. After about 25 feet of rolling it would belch out this huge cloud of smoke and start truly accelerating. Some had turbos, but obviously useless where it needed help the most.

 

Maybe 3% of Toyota’s customers are overlanding their vehicles. Toyota and any other manufacturer are going to do what drives their sales. Why won’t they bring a diesel over? Because they will sell very little. Exactly the same reason why just about every manufacturer has killed off MT. MT in a small truck like a Tacoma has made some sense. But with the trucks getting bigger and less and less new drivers knowing how or wanting to manually shift their transmission, that will be coming to an end very shortly as well.


With the soon to be introduction of electric trucks in the mass market, it won’t be long before small diesels are gone. The only platform diesels really make sense (currently) is in large/commercial trucks.

 

Slow, diesel midsize truck. That's a no from me.

 

The Hilux is not the same exact truck

 

Commercial will be electric soon enough too. The fleet I work on is mostly Hybrid or CNG, and new electric are being tested. Diesel is losing ground.

 

Yep, and that's with a custom tune. Stock motor in the Prado made 195 hp... which would be down to 175 hp if they actually had to meet US federal emissions with DPF and all.

I don't think this engine would actually increase the Tacoma's tow rating since the SAE J2807 standard is all acceleration-based.

 

Guy has more money than sense. I nominate him as honorary captain of "team short bus".

 

A 2TR turbo setup is what, maybe $8k if a shop does all the work? That would bring my total to around $33k.

 

The Short Bus Team does not accept this nomination of Captaincy! We are full, please don't contact us, we will contact you if a spot opens up.

 

Could always hook up a trailer like dem overlanders. Itd be like the 10th circle of hell.

 

Short bus is where the engine is taken from

 

Which is awesome and has ZERO of the auto tranny hunting problems.

 

There's nothing wrong with the AC60 transmission itself. It's the programming. If Toyota brought the diesel to NA they'd give it the same shitty shift logic to eek out another 1 mpg.

 

Clickbait is what you need at YouTube has all you'll ever thirst for

 

Wrong, nothing is wrong with the transmission, it does not have the torque to push a brick down the road at 70MPH, it is our limp noodle engine with zero torque down low that causes the problem. I just drove 4,000 miles around NZ and Australia in one of those, a lot at freeway speeds. Zero hunting at freeway speeds, because the turbo diesel makes enough grunt down low to use a super overdriven 6 speed auto.