Too many miles to buy?

This^. Mileage and time are killers of vehicles. The major drive train components may last a long time but all the little things can and will break or fail. There definitely is a lot of costs and downtime with older high mileage vehicles. If you are good at working on vehicles and you don’t mind working on and fixing all the “little” things that will go wrong and fail then that may be the truck for you. The little things also add up over time to major $$$.

 

Toyota has a long history of fucking up the first couple years of a new V6 engine. This includes 95, 96, 05, 06, and 2016. Let's not even mention the 3.slow. There are known head gasket issues for 05 and 06 V6 engines. They have never fucked up a 4 cylinder. If it was an 07 or later I'd be more inclined to agree. But I'd never touch a high mile 05 or 06 V6. Anything else I'd at least be open to reviewing the maintenance history.

Another important thing people neglect is mileage accumulation. If a vehicle history report indicated that 150,000 of those 250,000 were put on in 3 or 4 years, that's a really good sign. It means they were most likely low wear highway miles.

 

I would think it’s the opposite. 4 cyl would take a beating straining to move the truck it’s entire life, while 6cyl there is less strain due to spreading it over more cyl’ s.

 

That is not at all how it works. The 4 cylinder doesn't strain to move a Tacoma. It's a commercial engine that's used the world over in vehicles way larger than Tacos. The exact engine is used in CITY BUSES in Japan. It's an overbuilt tank.

If anything the lower power of the 4 cyl results in less stress on the entire drivetrain because it's simply not capable of subjecting it to the same torque that the V6 is. But this is really only a factor when you're gunning the engine to power ranges that the 4 cyl can't reach which isn't too often hopefully.

 

so you’re saying 4 cyl engine wouldn’t strain as much pulling the exact same truck as a 6cyl would?

so by your logic, we should just put 1 cyl engines in our vehicles then .

 

You are claiming that the 2TR is designed in such a way that accelerating a Tacoma to a given speed stresses the engine block/internals more so than the 1GR would be stressed accelerating to the same speed simply because one engine is capable of a higher power than the other. You simply cannot make this claim.

Maybe you need to utilize the 4 cylinder to 60% of its capability and the 6 cylinder to only 40% of its capability to reach that speed. But that has absolutely nothing to do with how much the engine is stressed and how much wear and tear is put on it in doing so. Both engines would be doing the exact same amount of work.

By your logic I should be able to drop a 454 into my Tacoma and expect 2 million miles out of it because I only need to use 10% of it's capability day to day. That's not how it works.

 

so are you agree that dropping a 1cyl into a Tacoma works best then?

 

No, that's also a terrible idea.

 

so 4cyl are in comparison to 6cyl

 

" Damn, I regret buying my 6 cyl over that 4cyl" says no one.