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!

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