My 2024 Toyota Tacoma Off-Road Journal

[TacoCabana]

Congrats! I also have a bronze oxide off-road that I picked up exactly a month before you. i’m going to upgrade the wheels, and I also want to add a tonneau cover and seat covers. I look forward to seeing your upgrades.

Just an fyi for you and anyone else — If you ever decide to get the extended warranty, you can buy the actual Toyota extended warranty plan from Troy Dietrich who is the business manager at a Toyota dealership in MA. Just google his name and you’ll find the website. The recent quote I got from him for a 10yr/100k factory extended warranty was $1300. It took him a couple of weeks to get back to me when I filled out the inquiry form. This is the exact same extended warranty you’d buy from Toyota. It’s not a 3rd party warranty. I know you weren’t interested in it when you bought your truck, but thought I’d pass on the info just in case since the price is pretty low. It can be purchased any time before the factory warranty expires. Keep in mind though that the price could increase over time due to inflation.

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[NoNo]

Spent 5 hours washing and waxing the truck today. Truck was mostly clean but it was still a lot of work. Lots of brake dust on the wheels and the truck has so many curves and corners. I know many people don't like the wheels but I think they clean up really nice and are some of the better stock wheels I've seen.

Only 400 some miles on the truck and I had a good number of small tar spots to get out. Luckily the truck had a lot of wax on it from the dealer so everything was easy to get out.

I waxed everything (many coats in some places), including the inside metal portions of the door. Sprayed everything black and the lights with protectant and detailed the inside. I didn't do the inside of the bed as I'm still debating a spray in bedliner and I was pretty sick of cleaning after 5 hours.

I went over every bit of paint on the truck and I only noticed a couple of tiny defects, even smaller than the head of a pin. They are small bubbles, definitely in the paint, but I would have never noticed them if I hadn't had my face an inch from them. One was on the roof and I can't even remember where the other one was. Without going over every bit of the truck again, I doubt I could find them. After such an extreme examination, I can say I'm very happy with the quality of the paint.

Hoping maybe I get my seat covers this week, that's the one thing I'm waiting on before I start driving this truck exclusively. After that it's time to clean up my old truck and get it sold.

 

[Kjc]

You have any paint swirling? I know it eventually happens from washing/drying but did you have anything you noticed off the lot? Truck looks awesome

I have an underground off road... In the sunlight I had a few spots of swirling

 

[MNTBKR]

New Guy here, just picked up a Bronze Oxide TRD OR as well. Feel like I got a fair deal, at first I had tested a TRD Off-road with the premium package but I really wanted this color. Mine like yours has the 14"screen but no power seats and no rear sliding window. We keep our cars for a long time and I figure the less electronic dudads the less thing that can go wrong. I love the way it drives and other than adding a tonneau cover, a leveling kit, and maybe wheels and tires down the road I don't see me doing much with it. I did get the dealer to throw in the all wether mats and they are installing Katskin leather seat covers.

 

[NoNo]

You have any paint swirling? I know it eventually happens from washing/drying but did you have anything you noticed off the lot? Truck looks awesome

I have an underground off road... In the sunlight I had a few spots of swirling

I couldn't find any swirling. The Bronze Oxide hides things surprisingly well. I had to look hard to see the tar spots. After I did the waxing I had to move the vehicle around in the sun and keep walking around it and looking at different angles to find spots of dry wax I missed. I was obsessive about the first coat being a good one. The main reason I wax the truck is that it keeps a lot of stuff from really sticking to the paint, making it a lot easier to clean, and it reduces rock chips a little bit, especially after I build up a few coats.

The stock wheels seem pretty well tucked under the flares, so I'm a little bit hopeful I can keep from tearing things up on the gravel roads. All the exposed paint on the front end is going to be more problematic. I don't particularly like the looks of a bug deflector but they've done a great job of protecting what they cover on all my trucks. Haven't been able to find one for the Tacoma yet.

 

[Miqie]

Spent 5 hours washing and waxing the truck today. Truck was mostly clean but it was still a lot of work. Lots of brake dust on the wheels and the truck has so many curves and corners. I know many people don't like the wheels but I think they clean up really nice and are some of the better stock wheels I've seen.

Only 400 some miles on the truck and I had a good number of small tar spots to get out. Luckily the truck had a lot of wax on it from the dealer so everything was easy to get out.

I waxed everything (many coats in some places), including the inside metal portions of the door. Sprayed everything black and the lights with protectant and detailed the inside. I didn't do the inside of the bed as I'm still debating a spray in bedliner and I was pretty sick of cleaning after 5 hours.

I went over every bit of paint on the truck and I only noticed a couple of tiny defects, even smaller than the head of a pin. They are small bubbles, definitely in the paint, but I would have never noticed them if I hadn't had my face an inch from them. One was on the roof and I can't even remember where the other one was. Without going over every bit of the truck again, I doubt I could find them. After such an extreme examination, I can say I'm very happy with the quality of the paint.

Hoping maybe I get my seat covers this week, that's the one thing I'm waiting on before I start driving this truck exclusively. After that it's time to clean up my old truck and get it sold.

Looks great! I have the Bronze Oxide in Sport. Not overly enthused about the white interior, but oh well. Which wax did you use ?

 

[NoNo]

Looks great! I have the Bronze Oxide in Sport. Not overly enthused about the white interior, but oh well. Which wax did you use ?

NuFinish is pretty much all I use. I've used others occasionally but I've been using NuFinish for nearly 40 years and it's still my favorite. I liked Klasse ok too, but I found the application a bit more finicky.

 

[NoNo]

Put another 100 or so miles on the truck today. It was a very diverse mix of conditions, winding paved roads with hills and the most off-roading I've done so far as I was going around to different kayaking spots. I hit a lot of very bad gravel and dirt roads up and down forested ridges. One climb that I've done so many times over the years in different trucks, was my first good challenge for the truck. The road is loose rock and dirt, sometimes solid exposed rock in places, and incredibly steep for quite a distance. In the best conditions I can do the climb in 2WD with an LSD, with a good start. Even in the best conditions though, if you run into someone coming down, there's not enough room and if you have to stop you are done. The road is always rutted in every direction with huge ruts often horizontal and angled up and down the road, making it even more challenging. Anyway, I started out in 2WD and quickly switched to 4WD today. Truck felt awesome with everything I threw at it today.

All the expectations I had of the external reservoir shocks and the rear coil springs have been exceeded. The truck feels so solid off road. The rear end is just such a huge improvement over any leaf spring truck. I hit severe washboard roads that I've been over a million times and it was a world of difference in this truck. With every other truck if I did anything other than crawl, the back end would bounce and drift sideways, in the Tacoma it was so smooth, no drift at all.

I was surprised that on the steepest uphill (I had left it in eco mode), the turbo never kicked in and the truck felt very strong climbing. It was weird because I've had the turbo kick in on much less steep slopes, it's like the truck knew exactly what it needed for the best performance on the climb, and I didn't try any of the other fancy settings.

Only one minor complaint in everything I put the truck through today. On one part of the very steep climb I have to make a sharp turn. I'm about 5'9" and I have the seat at max height. It was kind of scary on that steep climb and the sharp turn as there's a big spot in front of the hood that I cant see at all. There was no way to tell if I was staying in the road or going off a cliff. That's probably the only time I'd like to have the cameras that the higher trims have. I know the road, so it's not a big deal, but similar conditions on an unknown road or trail would be more tricky.

The winding and hilly paved roads were fun too. First time where I felt like ECO mode really didn't cut it. It was ok. The manual says that kind of driving is exactly what Sport mode is for, but I found it too aggressive on these roads. It seemed like it wanted to keep the truck around 2200 rpms, and that just wasn't necessary. Normal mode did significantly better than both modes, keeping the rpms in the right range all the time and shifting at the perfect points. With so much torque at 1700rpm, the truck just always feels ready to go and the three modes do actually help quite a bit in tweaking that for your driving style in different conditions. I just loved the way the truck drove on those windy roads, and same on all the very steep climbs off road. It was such a unique driving experience after the last two trucks I had which seemed to always be running in too high a gear, always had to downshift when asked to do anything, and never seemed to be ready or in the right gear at the right time. I wanted to blast up and down the bad roads much more than I did, but every bit of rock I was kicking up was still making me cringe so I kept my speeds reasonable.

Besides the truck feeling so rock solid off road, I also really noticed it actually felt more nimble off road than on road. To me it feels like a big truck on the road, I'm neutral on that, maybe even a bit negative on that as I don't want the truck to feel like a full size. Off the road it actually feels much smaller, even through it feels so solid, it's hard to describe. The suspension seems tuned very well for the weight of the truck and tires. I think anyone who really off roads should drive it stock before upgrading to much bigger and heavier tires, and then compare. To me the wheels had the perfect amount of bounce over big bumps and in big holes...they felt very light and I felt like the suspension just did an incredible job of controlling them. In my experience with other trucks, I've found that balance changes for the worse when you start adding a lot heavier tires to the stock suspension.

I just can't say enough about how nice the truck handled all I drove it through today, and I had high expectations. It will probably be a while but I can't wait to test this truck in mud and snow!

 

[Deleted User 1813921]

I feel the same about the eco normal and sport modes and feel they give a good choice for terrain and conditions. Great write up when reading it I wanted to go jump my Tacoma switch to sport and boost it!

 

[NoNo]

First update to my journal in a while but I thought this was a worthwhile one. I always laugh when I see reviews of "off-road" trucks and related accessories like traction boards. I don't think I've ever seen a reviewer actually do anything remotely close to what I do on a weekly basis with my truck. I was looking at traction board reviews and the guys were using them over an inch or two of mud or snow and acting like the boards performed miracles.

I've put my Tacoma through some rough stuff previously but this last weekend was the biggest challenge yet. I started out driving on roads that hadn't been plowed, with 8" of snow, more where it had drifted. The stock tires on the TRD OR are not so great in snow and mud but they got me down the roads in 4WD even when I was pushing snow with the front bumper.

I ended up on some old mining properties where the roads aren't maintained much, not really at all in winter. I try to avoid the worst stuff because some of the mud pits can be deep enough to sink a truck to it's axle. I made it through two deep pits but the third one definitely wasn't the charm. I had gotten out and walked, trying to figure out the best way around this big mud pit that was frozen over. There was too much snow over the path I chose to tell exactly what was underneath. I broke through 6-8" of ice and dropped into the mud pit. There's no bottom to these pits. If you spin your tires you are just going deeper until you are in to the axle. I tried everything to get out and nothing was working. Finally got out to assess the situation and I thought the gigantic blocks of ice surrounding the wheels were likely the problem. I didn't have anything in the truck other than a tow strap, and no one was coming down this road. I ended up having to pull the big blocks of ice out from under the vehicle with my hands (covered in plastic bags I had in the truck). You can see some of the blocks scattered around in the photos. After getting those out, I was only able to get out with 4WD low and the locking rear diff. I was kind of surprised because I had dug in pretty good trying to get out before removing the ice blocks, and was pretty close to sitting on the axle. The passenger side was up quite a bit higher with the wheels barely touching. I had to slowly rock the vehicle back and forth before I got enough traction and then had to seriously power the rest of the way through or I would have just gotten stuck again.

After assessing the damage, I've got a small crack in the bottom of the bumper, in front of the passenger front wheel. I completely ripped out the fender liner on that side. I never even noticed that, never saw the liner come out. It actually could have been ripped out in any of the three mud pits I went through. Guessing it got caught on something and then got run over and buried in the mud. It came off clean, all the screws and mounting areas look fine. Had it at the dealer today and it's about $350 total, equal parts and labor. Looks like an easy install myself, but it would be easiest to install with the truck on a lift and the tire off, so I'll let the dealer do it. Estimate is 4 days for the parts.

Immediately after I went out and bought a real shovel to keep in the truck and a pair of traction boards. I'd had a shovel in my last truck but it was too big and I didn't leave it in the truck all the time. I ended up getting a heavy duty shovel but it's only about 36". Long enough to reach under but small enough to sit on the floor in the back seat and not take up too much room. I may even be able to fit it in the bag with the traction boards. The traction boards I thought about before but never wanted to spend the money on them. I picked up some Bunker Indust boards for $75, which is the design I liked the most without spending 2-4 times as much.

Shovel probably would have been the most important thing to have. I could have broken up those ice blocks and it would have been a lot easier and not as messy getting them out with the shovel. I'll be anxious to upgrade tires once these wear out, they really don't have much bite in mud or snow. Things that I could do easily in 2WD in my previous truck with better tires are impossible to do in this truck without going into 4WD.

More ground clearance definitely would have been nice to have, especially around the front bumper. I've always had problems with air dams and had to remove them, and this is actually the second truck where I've busted the front bumper in a deep hole. I don't have the front sway bar disconnect and that might have helped in this situation. My front passenger wheel barely had contact with the ground, and a couple of more inches of drop would have probably made quite a bit of difference in traction. All in all though I was glad the locking diff came through for me. Not something I use every day but I do get my use out of it. I'm also thinking about eventually getting an aftermarket front bumper but I've yet to see a design I really like, that doesn't involve cutting. So far the front bumper and the exhaust pipe have been the problem low points for me on this truck. I know the available options for the exhaust pipe but just haven't been motivated to do that mod yet, maybe once I crush the stock pipe

 

[NoNo]

 

[NoNo]

Thought it was about time for an update. I passed 27K this weekend and washed/waxed my truck for only the second time since I owned it. I offroad at least weekly, usually more often than that, so it's pointless to do more than spray the mud off my truck most of the time.

There were a number of early complaints about the paint on the 4th gen. After a year I am pretty confident saying I have no complaints whatsoever. I've run my truck into things many times. I had some scrapes on the sides of my truck that looked pretty bad, driving on narrow trails where branches scraped along the sides of the vehicle. After cleaning the truck this weekend I was surprised that all of the scrapes completely disappeared. Probably more notable to me, when I cleaned the front of the truck which was absolutely loaded with bugs, tar, etc. I did not find a single chip in the paint. Maybe some of that can be attributed to my initial coat of wax, but I think it's pretty good performance for the paint regardless. I wonder if any of that is attributable to the front end having so much plastic, and it maybe being more forgiving?

The truck also survived two very heavy hail storms this year. One I was watching huge hail stones bouncing off the vehicle and thinking the whole time about how much damage was going to be done. From the worst storm the truck ended up with one small dent in the hood. Not a single chip in the paint and no other dents that were visible to the naked eye, and I looked the truck over very carefully after each storm. I picked up a kit to pull the dent in the hood, but I still haven't convinced myself to try it.

Anyway, I expect my truck to get dinged up but I was pleasantly surprised that things were not nearly as bad as I was expecting when I finally cleaned it up. I coat the impact areas like the front end and behind the wheels, very heavy with wax, and will probably try to get one more coat on before winter this year. Worst damage I've seen from all the off-road driving I do is to the rear wheel fenders. It's not visible without looking close (would probably be much more visible if they were painted as in the sport model), but cleaning them I can feel they are very roughed up. That's a small price to pay in my opinion, since they are easily replaceable compared to constantly chipping paint in those areas.

The suspension is something else I wanted to comment on. I still laugh at all the initial panic about the shocks. i've off-roaded so much and had no issues whatsoever. What I have noticed though is that at least for me, the suspension could be better for even moderately rough trails. It seems a bit soft to me, which is great if the bumps are smaller and the ruts more shallow, but on bigger things or at faster speeds I've found the suspension lacking. Not a big deal to me, it's just forced me to go slower over the rough stuff. Cornering performance and body lean have become a little more annoying to me over time. It's to be expected I guess, on a truck that even stock sits up kind of high, but I find myself taking turns slower than I'd like. I'm really nitpicking here, but I can see why some might prefer the sport suspension if they spend more time on the road.

I've seen posts about the suspension bottoming out and I can't tell if that's really the case or if the suspension simply behaves very poorly when you hit something at a certain angle. I've had cases where I've gone over big bumps and felt almost nothing, and other times I've hit a tiny speed bump or pothole, and it feels sort of like the suspension bottoms out, but maybe more like the force is coming back harder horizontally than vertically. It's strange and seems like it has to be something very specific to make the impact seem exaggerated. it doesn't happen often but I'm always surprised when it does, and I'm usually left thinking "that felt a lot worse than it looked!".

One problem I do have that I have seen others mention, the seat not retaining a high position. Mildly annoying but I find myself raising it back up almost every time I drive.

After my first full winter and spring, I can say the stock tires mostly suck . if you stick to roads you'll be ok, but off road the tires are not very good in the snow or mud. I found myself using 4WD in conditions where I normally wouldn't bother, and traction was still only ok. Not enough to make me upgrade immediately, but I'll be glad when these tires wear out and I can replace them.

On the plus side, I still love the engine and transmission as much as I did day 1. It's smooth for a truck and has all the power I need. Passing, driving up to 90mph, all pretty uneventful. I'm probably one of the few people that likes having the economy, normal, and sport modes. I mostly drive in economy because I'm usually limited by traffic, but the truck is significantly more fun to drive in the other modes. My truck is my daily driver so fuel economy does matter to me and I've been happy with what this truck can do for the most part. I average anywhere from 24-30mpg for most trips in warm weather. Fuel economy drops in cold weather and it's not the change in the fuel blend. I don't remember what the exact temp was but I watched during the change of seasons over the last year and there was a point at which it became nearly impossible to get the 24+mpg I got in warm weather, regardless of my driving. I've seen most vehicles drop off, but subjectively it seems like the drop off is a bit more significant with this engine.

I was not happy with being forced to go from an extended cab/long bed pickup to a short bed, but I've been ok with it. The extra room in the cab is a mild plus for me, no kids or pets to put back there, just easier to fit a lot of outdoor stuff. The loss of room in the bed hasn't been as big a sacrifice for me. Probably the biggest load I haul is a cubic yard of rock/dirt/mulch, and I can fit that in the short bed. I miss the long bed for kayaks and canoes but I haul both regularly. Canoes are always with the tailgate down and a bed extender that goes in the hitch. With my small kayaks I can go either way tailgate down or up, but usually it's a bit easier to go with the tailgate down. The main thing I've worried about hauling with the tailgate down is rock chips in the tailgate, but so far I've had no problems even driving a lot on the highway and a lot on gravel roads.

Sorry this is long and boring but boring (in a good way) is pretty much what this vehicle has been for me. Not a single issue with the truck so far, no major complaints, and for me it's a near perfect balance of being very capable for very regular off-roading, yet completely comfortable as a daily driver.

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