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First, I don't really have a dog in this fight. My grill shutters so far haven't been affected by any wiring gremlins and I was able to install my bumper/winch without any major modifications.
That said, another forum member installed the bumper light mount kit w/lights from SDHQ Offroad. The lights mount in the grill and as part of the installation you remove the grill shutter assembly completely. SDHQ includes a couple of 3D printed mounting brackets for the grill shutter motors. You remove the motors from the shutter assembly and remount them with the brackets. Effectively the motors are still active and the truck electronics function as normal but you lose the whole shutter assembly. That frees up a lot of space behind the grill!
This got me thinking. I thought somewhere I had read that Toyota had completely removed any mechanical thermostat from the new engines and therefore the grill shutters were the only thing responsible for affecting coolant temps. If true that would make removing the shutters a very bad idea. I had a hard time believing that though. Seemed like a very complicated solution to a problem that never existed.
The other option would be that the grill shutters are there strictly to provide some aero benefits in which case, who cares, the fuel economy is already terrible and any fractional improvement made by the shutters is unlikely to change my life.
So, I reached out to SDHQ just to see what they had to say and this was their response, "
The T24A-FTS engines found in the 2024+ Tacoma have an electronic control valve to regulate temperature. So coolant temperature is controlled by the ECU tuning parameters. The grille shutters are purely for the very slight increase in MPGs at highway speeds to meet CAFE standards.".
That makes me think that there is no mechanical thermostat but that it has been replaced with an electronic valve which effectively performs the same function, which makes sense to me.
Assuming this is true, and I have no reason to think SDHQ didn't do their homework, would you remove the grill shutters if someone were selling just the bracket to remount the motors?
P.S. Purely out of curiosity I've asked SDHQ if they would sell just the motor brackets and the response is that they hadn't really considered it but definitely would bring it up in their next product design meeting...
That said, another forum member installed the bumper light mount kit w/lights from SDHQ Offroad. The lights mount in the grill and as part of the installation you remove the grill shutter assembly completely. SDHQ includes a couple of 3D printed mounting brackets for the grill shutter motors. You remove the motors from the shutter assembly and remount them with the brackets. Effectively the motors are still active and the truck electronics function as normal but you lose the whole shutter assembly. That frees up a lot of space behind the grill!
This got me thinking. I thought somewhere I had read that Toyota had completely removed any mechanical thermostat from the new engines and therefore the grill shutters were the only thing responsible for affecting coolant temps. If true that would make removing the shutters a very bad idea. I had a hard time believing that though. Seemed like a very complicated solution to a problem that never existed.
The other option would be that the grill shutters are there strictly to provide some aero benefits in which case, who cares, the fuel economy is already terrible and any fractional improvement made by the shutters is unlikely to change my life.
So, I reached out to SDHQ just to see what they had to say and this was their response, "
The T24A-FTS engines found in the 2024+ Tacoma have an electronic control valve to regulate temperature. So coolant temperature is controlled by the ECU tuning parameters. The grille shutters are purely for the very slight increase in MPGs at highway speeds to meet CAFE standards.".
That makes me think that there is no mechanical thermostat but that it has been replaced with an electronic valve which effectively performs the same function, which makes sense to me.
Assuming this is true, and I have no reason to think SDHQ didn't do their homework, would you remove the grill shutters if someone were selling just the bracket to remount the motors?
P.S. Purely out of curiosity I've asked SDHQ if they would sell just the motor brackets and the response is that they hadn't really considered it but definitely would bring it up in their next product design meeting...
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