I took the road trip before doing anything with the brakes and everything went without incident - like I mentioned, there was still adequate pad left. But, with winter approaching and another road trip coming up (this one only about 1200 miles) I didn't want to wait any further on the front brakes.
I did quite a bit of research on brake options. I've really given up on turning rotors. This used to be the only realistic option, but I'm pretty convinced that turning results in a much shorter service life to rotors. Besides, new rotors are not too expensive given how long brakes actually last. Note that this applies to "hat-type" rotors. With captured rotors, turning rotors on the car probably makes more sense, my loathing of captured rotors aside.
I decided on using PowerStop brakes. Overall reviews were pretty good and having a quality rotor matched to pads makes sense. Their good/better/best approach to selling brakes products leaves options and I went with their Autospecialty OE brake kit. The 4-cylinder Tacoma is a fairly light truck and my driving style is (usually) moderately conservative. It seemed a little silly to use a higher performance brake kit with the very anemic 4-cylinder engine. Drilled and slotted brake rotors help them cool faster which minimizes fade, but for daily driving there isn't much advantage. I liked that they came with ceramic pads. Note this is a generic picture since obviously the 4x4 Tacoma is a 6-lug wheel. I forgot to take a pic of the actual rotors and pads. In hindsight, I should have done a write-up on the entire procedure.
Changing the brakes was relatively easy. With past vehicles, I've had issues with rotors rusting to the hub, but this time the rotors popped right off. The biggest difficulty I encountered was the caliper bolts were somewhat corroded into place. It either took my biggest breaker bar or a lot of work from the air impact gun to get them off. Hopefully the antiseize I used during reassembly will help alleviate this for any future brake job.
After completing the brake job and changing the oil, I followed the PowerStop recommendation for Break-In Procedure. It felt a little stupid driving down the road aggressively hitting the brakes and accelerating, but luckily I live in a very rural area so this was easy to do. On the way home, I returned to normal driving.
What a phenomenal difference in braking!!!!! I try to avoid superlatives in life, but the difference in braking performance was almost unbelievable. I'm sure some of the change was due to the old brakes deterioration, but the the PowerStop brakes felt phenomenal and the stopping was much more positive. Time will tell whether these brakes hold up, but as of now I am very glad I went with these brakes.
I've previously complained about my Tacoma, including the feel of the brakes. I'm not sure why Toyota can't do this from the factory. But, I must be honest in that as much as I've found faults with it, this really has been a good vehicle - with nearly 85,000 miles on the clock now. It is somewhat frustrating that there are many things that for only a small amount invested could have been much better off the showroom floor. The Toyota Tacoma was definitely made to a price point (I guess all vehicles that mere mortals can afford to buy are).
With a big improvement to the braking, I decided to investigate the "notchy" shifting of the R155F manual transmission. It feels and works very well when warm, but when it is cold outside, shifting from first to second takes considerable effort and sometimes grunts a little when going into second. If the outside temperature is below zero, it can get even worse.
Research into this suggested the fluid used in the manual transmission can affect shifting performance. I thought this was very suspect. The Vehicle Owners Manual states that 75W-90 GL-4 or GL-5 is suitable for the manual transmission. As long as the fluid meets these requirements, I would have surmised that the actual fluid used would only make a minimal difference with different fluids mostly differing in service life.
After reading about differences between gear oils online including this very informative article, I decided that it was a cheap enough experiment to try a GL-4 gear oil in place of the Amsoil SevereGear GL-5 I currently had in the transmission.
There were lots of recommendations for Amsoil GL-4 MTG.
There were probably an equal number of recommendations for Redline MT-90
I'm a member of the Amsoil Preferred Customer program. I like being able to order my oil online without having to worry if it will be in stock at my local store and it almost always shows up within two days, delivered right in front of my garage door. I'm not so sure about the way they sell their products (we don't use the word pyramid), but I trust their lubricants. I'm sure Redline is also good, but it is a little harder to come by and ends up being more expensive. So, I went with Amsoil MTG.
Now, the difference here is not as noticeable as the improvement I saw with brakes, but moving from the GL-5 gear oil to the GL-4 in the R155F manual transmission made a noticeable difference. No, shifting still doesn't satisfyingly "snick" into gear like it should be, but much of the cold weather issues are diminished.
The service schedule for the Tacoma calls for manual transmission fluid change at 30,000 mile intervals so it will be a while until I change it again, but I may try Redline MT-90 at the next one. I have to admit that in this case the gear oil I chose did make a difference so it is a reasonable experiment to try.
The recent cold weather has given me time to start wondering about new vehicles. I have no immediate plans to buy anything, but if a meteor comes out of the sky tomorrow and lands on my truck in the parking lot at work I probably should have an idea of what I might want as a replacement.
Unfortunately, there is nothing out there I find terribly interesting.
What I really want is small, 4wd open-bedded pickup that gets good gas miles, and has reasonable performance. The Tacoma is actually bigger than I want. Preview pictures of the 2016 Tacoma show that it might even be growing a bit in the future. I guess details will be unveiled soon enough?
I don't think either the Tacoma or the recently introduced Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon should be called small. Even midsize is a misnomer. How about calling them almost full sized in both scale and price with the same somewhat disappointing fuel economy?
Ford made a lot of waves with the new 2015 F-150 and it all-aluminum body. I would be tempted to go in this direction, especially since I have a relative that works at Ford and can use his discount. But, I really don't want anything this big and the fuel economy of the aluminum truck is realistically only marginally better. An extended cab four wheel drive F-150 with Ecoboost engine gets around 18 city, 23 highway miles per gallon. With all the hype, I was hoping for better.
I'm almost embarrassed to say it, but the vehicle I do find interesting is the 2015 Jeep Renegade. It is frankly about the size that I would want. I suspect fuel economy will be near 30mpg on the highway (at least I hope). Without an open bed, I'm not sure where I might throw a dead deer should I be successful in upcoming deer hunting seasons? Sadly, the availability of information from Jeep, not to mention the vehicle itself seems to be very delayed. I wonder if anything should be read into this?
There are also rumors that the Fiat Strada might be coming to the US, likely as a Ram, less likely as a Jeep. This is already sold in Mexico as a Ram. Yeah, it is ugly, but it would fill a void not available in the US market. Then again, maybe it isn't ugly?
What I don't understand is that there is definitely an unmet need for a small truck in the US. There are numerous models available worldwide (another being the VW Saveiro), but no move in that direction here. It almost seems that auto manufacturers are all staring at each other on this one and waiting for someone to blink...
Well blink already! And, damn the Chicken Tax!
