Turbo 4 Cylinder Tacoma

You’d like the Turbo 4 engine bay!

 

My camper is 4250# dry, around 5k packed up. Pulled great!

 

Regardless of manual or automatic, from owning past Toyota generations, manual, automatic, and 6-speed, I find the 8 speed automatic dropping one gear for higher speed climbs really great.

For most of my teens through senior citizen I've had manual transmissions and we still have that with our German car but from how long we shopped and how much we tested, I chose the automatic gen 4 Tacoma. It is nothing against the manual version and we love that it is still an option. Beyond the good gearing for my work oriented use is the TSS 3. With a modern manual transmission vehicle and a car with Subaru's EyeSight I wanted the pickup to have that for stop and go traffic.

Every time I do a run to our cabin or work with heavy payload with climbing I think of the prior gen haters because the V6 6 speed auto Toyota 4x4s popular enough where a gen 4 goes by them screaming like something hurts.

 

Your truck looks good! What wheels do you have on there? They look to be the KMC wheels that resemble the 3G Pro wheels. In the picture they look like something else with a more factory offset, and look sort of like an OEM 4G wheel, or even a Ford design wheel. Either way I like the way they look.

 

KMC 17" with Mickey Thompson Baha Boss 285 70r 17 tires with 2.5 lift. All from the dealer.

 

Those are good looking wheels and tires. I thought I saw your truck here with the wheels before but wasn't sure. In the picture the wheels almost look like the solid gray Prerunner wheels that are the same design as the OR black/machine. Any way, if Toyota did an OEM wheel that looks like the wheels on your truck in that picture, that would be great.

 

Tacoma was never a towing truck in a first place, when it had the big ol' 4.0L even then it struggled. It will tow, but it won't be as powerful as V6 no matter what anyone or paper says. Now if that 4cyl was diesel, you would hear nothing but praise from me. Just as they do with Hilux/LC. But it aint diesel so it won't be as bullet proof with towing as NA V6.

The quality of vehicles have gone down over the decades. Its not because car manufacturers simply want it, its because recourses are shrinking and stuff is expensive. They didn't start dropping big fat engines because smaller ones are better ( talking about trucks / full suv's here ) they do it because they have to.

If smaller engines were good for towing, car manufacturers wouldn't be putting V8s and V6s in trucks/full SUVs in a first place.. It makes no sense, cost to manufacture & repair large engines was always more than smaller ones, they would have no reason to.

They had Turbos in the past too, it aint new. Only reason we are seeing it now being put in trucks is because lack of recourses and emissions to keep large engines. Tundra dropped V8 and has twin turbo V6, next will be 4cyl in tundra too. Anyone who says V8 didn't tow and twin turbo V6 is better hasn't towed in their life. There was V8 in that truck for a reason, no it was not because Toyota was living in a cave and didn't know turbos existed, it was in there because that's what heavy load needs. Toyota has been putting 4cyl diesels in their trucks across Eurasia forever, they just know what is better, which is why Tundra had V8 & Tacoma had V6.

American trucks keep big engines OR Diesel because their customers buy em as work trucks. Tacoma was always more of a capable bring it on kinda truck, you can go anywhere with it and it does not need V8 to do off roading. So its not really a big deal for Taco to drop V6 and move on to 4cyl.

My suggestion is that rent one for a day, put bunch of sht in the bed and see how it pulls, won't be same as towing but they won't let you tow trailer with rental so that's as close as it will get with real life experience. Compare then how it feels with 3rd gen V6.



Anyone who believes numbers they see on paper in this day and age is delusional.

Oh but it says here it makes more horsepower and more torque!!! Oh yea? So does 3rd gen Tacoma towing rating is at 6500 lbs on the paper. Go tow it and let me know how accurate the paper is.

 

First off, a turbo will produce more low end torque, which is good for towing. Ask anyone that tows and went from 3g to 4g, and see what they say. As far as the full size, the F150 with the turbo has the highest tow rating of all their engines. Again, ask an ecoboost owner how well they tow.

 

Yea they tow and fall apart, that's what happens to tiny non diesel 4cyl turbos. You just proved what I was saying. As far as I am concerned I didn't buy Tacoma knowing its going for same reliability as Ford.

 

Don’t take the bait….

 

Not going to. I think he’s just sad because he owns a truck with bad seating position that hunts for gears. The ecoboosts have been around long enough to know they don’t fall apart, and I believe Toyota builds a better product than them.

 

The non-fourth-gen trolls are thick here. Spurting all the reasons why their generation is better than the new one.

Give me a beak.

 

Today first time I really noticed the 4G dropping to lower gears to pass on highway. Surprised me that is was low growl, not the high screaming banshee like the 3G. I did not expect that. Does anyone else's behave that way?

 

Was that the 1.4 Turbo Cruze?

 

That’s the one. Garbage.

 

I was talking to another customer in AutoZone one day that had one. He said it was already on the 3rd or 4th Turbo and hated it, but it was his Wife's car, lol.

 

It should be everyone's gen 4. All 3 versions of the powertrain develop torque low. One has the electric motor helping. The acoustic treatments whether physical or software change up the sound a bit. The engine will definitely operate at higher RPM and like a modern variable valve timing vehicle but IMO it is just designed and tuned to be a high torque powertrain very happy either side of 2000 RPM.

Maybe some growl is the electronics but if you are a back seat passenger you can hear the exhaust noise more. It is just a turbocharged 4 cylinder NOT at all like most I've known in 50s years of driving.

 

Toyota still uses V8s in their cup cars.

 

I don't have an opinion on the 4th gen, as I don't own one, haven't driven one, and don't tow anything. Currently driving a 1st gen Tacoma & A 5th gen 4Runner, and never owned a 3rd gen. I come on here to learn. That said, if all you want on the 4th gen forum is 4th gen owners echoing their delight to each other about the new Tacoma, it wouldn't be much of a forum.

 

True, but we don’t need people who haven’t owned or driven one bashing. Aside from a very few people that have had issues, the 4th gen has proven to be a great evolution of the Tacoma, fixing a lot of the complaints about the third gen. If I have an issue or question, I don’t need someone who has never owned one bashing it.