So it's been three months with my 5th Gen 2020 SR5

It’s been three months, and I got a survey for my 5th gen 4Runner SR5 2020 last week. It’s one of those checkbox things. I might fill it out. I don’t know. I’d rather share thoughts. I wonder what would happen if I just printed this out and put this in the envelope. At least they’re covering the postage.

I’m not sure if I love my 4Runner. I’m coming from a 2009 Jeep Liberty, after the refresh so it was boxier, and I’m finding the 4Runner to be a lot different from my first impressions in my first test drive and the first month or so of driving it.

(I’m going to be using the word car as a more specific term for what would commonly be a car style vehicle instead of referring to vehicles generically as cars. Likewise, terms like SUV and truck will be used in a more specific manner to differentiate vehicles. I’ll be using the word vehicle a lot, too.)

I was beginning to lean towards getting a car for my next vehicle. I was getting more into cars leading up to the time I found myself in the market for a new vehicle, but I ended up going with an SUV again. But before that, I was watching the Initial D anime which rekindled some of my interest in cars in that category. Another thing that had me leaning towards a car is that I was kind of treating my Liberty as a car towards the end of its life. I got really familiar with it, and I was enjoying the performance, but it was kind of limiting with its size and weight.

Another thing that may have colored my view is that the Liberty kind of shared a platform with a Dodge SUV of the time. I actually didn’t know this until a month or so ago. It also had part time 4WD and RWD when it was turned off. I didn’t even know much about the Dodge brand until earlier this year, but I can see why the setup the Liberty and the Dodge SUV would lend itself towards a Dodge mindset. While it wasn’t super powerful super performance, it still felt powerful to drive.

My 5th gen 4Runner… doesn’t feel powerful on the road. It’s big, heavy, and slow. It doesn’t give me the beans in my belly when I give it the beans with my right foot and my hands on the steering wheel.

In some respects, that’s a good thing. I’m not going to give any excuses for being irresponsible, and I’m not promoting driving recklessly or anything. However, you don’t have to get close to that limit with the 4Runner for it to be apparent that you’re not going to have a good time. I could have more fun with my old Liberty while still being safe. I think that comes down to a few things. Those things aren’t necessarily bad things. They may just be bad for me. I think that’s going to be the conclusion I get to when this is all over, that it’s good, just not good for me.

The 4Runner accelerates poorly. There, I said it. Floor it, don’t floor it, it’s not too different. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems to me that my 4Runner gives me a little bit more when I press on the pedal a bit less from maximum. Max throttle does make the engine louder, but it doesn’t pull any more. Out of every vehicle I’ve ever driven, the 4Runner scores the lowest on the butt dyno.

It’s so heavy, too. I was taking a turn on a road I’ve driven thousands of times last Friday, and I got to this one corner. It’s one of the most engaging corners I drive, and the 4Runner makes it engaging for all the wrong reasons. With the Liberty, it would be slow down, turn in, keep it tight, and pull away powerfully. With the 4Runner, it was like I was trying to drive a shopping cart with an elephant in the baby seat through the corner. It was a lumbering mess. It didn’t feel good at all.

And it’s so big. This actually isn’t something that I totally dislike. It’s a fortress on wheels. Roomy, lots of storage, etc. Even if it’s not a luxury vehicle, there are lots of practical features. Even more so since I’ve got a 2020 with USB charging ports in the back seat, Android Auto, etc. But that size. Its overall size is a bit bigger than my old Liberty. It’s about a foot longer, and it’s got to be a bit wider as well. I was feeling the size more in the early days, but then the pandemic happened, so I haven’t been encountering crowded mall parking lots. I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about it when things get more back to normal and I’m not one of the few vehicles parking in any parking lot I’m in. Maybe I’ll already be used to it by then, maybe I won’t. On the flip side, it’s a lot of mass. It’s more room than I need. I was thinking about getting a car, so I know this is more room than I need. Since it’s so wide and long, it’s a bit much to handle sometimes, even if there aren’t so many other vehicles around. My parking situation at home is a little odd, too, and I wish I had a smaller vehicle to navigate it. Especially if it was a bit more narrow.

Then there’s the steering. Hrm… This is a weird one. This comparison might not make sense to you, but try to imagine. It’s 1994, and Daytona USA just came out in the arcade. The force feedback in the steering wheel is new and powerful. That’s my Liberty. Now, it’s 2002, and the remaining Daytona USA games in the arcade are showing their age. When you turn the steering wheel, there’s no resistance or feedback. That’s closer to what I experience with the 4Runner. It feels like I’m turning nothing at all! Stupid sexy Flanders!

Another thing that I don’t like is the throttle response. I don’t know what’s to blame. I looked into the Sprint Booster, but I don’t think that’s the direction I want to go. It’s kind of expensive, too. I know the 4th gen V6 paled in comparison to the V8. I actually looked at V8s on Carfax this morning. I think I at least would have been happier with an older V8. Maybe I wouldn’t have been in love with it, but I think I would have been happier.

Even with all of these issues, I still think my 4Runner is a good vehicle. It’s great at what it does. It’s also been proven to be a reliable, durable, dependable vehicle. With all that’s been going on in the world in the past few months, me getting my 4Runner may have been the most responsible thing I could have done. With proper maintenance, it’s not going to let me down. It may not have the best gas mileage, but I won’t have to spend time and money dealing with problems. And if the worst happens, I can put on some off road tires and go off the grid into safety.

But I don’t love it like I loved my Liberty. My Liberty may have been a piece of crap, but it made me happy. My Liberty was a unibody, and my 4Runner has made me realize I don’t care so much about truck style body on frame. Looking back, my mom’s old Chevy Blazer was body on frame, and I didn’t even know it until I looked it up last week out of curiosity. Going from Blazer to Liberty, it didn’t matter to me at all. I didn’t even notice the change in body type. At least for my driving needs, body on frame doesn’t matter one bit.

One thing that does matter more to me is rear wheel drive, or at least a default state of rear wheel drive. I didn’t even know, but wow, rear wheel drive really became a luxury thing since the 80s and 90s. Once they got front wheel drive cheap enough to produce, it became the standard for the proletariat. Somehow I’ve avoided front wheel drive nearly all my life. I drove my dad’s short-lived lemon of a Cherokee with front wheel drive a couple times, and it was so weird. My first car was a 1983 Ford Fairmont with RWD. Then I drove older SUVs, body on frame or unibody, with RWD/4WD and a detour with an 89 or 90 Chevy Caprice Classic when I had to borrow it from my dad. V8 RWD goodness! It was a boat, but it was good!

Actually, I think this is the first time I thought about the Caprice and the 4Runner together, and I think I liked driving the Caprice more.

When I was looking at vehicles earlier this year, I was leaning towards an AWD/RWD default car. Options were limited, though. The big candidates were the Dodges. I began to get more educated on Fiat Chrysler, and my Liberty’s transmission unceremoniously died for the second time, so that struck Dodge off the list. Long story short, cutting out other brands and their cars that I decided against, and the fact that reliability became more important than ever in my decision, I went with the 4Runner. The big reasons I went with the 4Runner was the reliability, in no small part due to it having older technology that was proven dependable, and the fact that other SUVs adopted the cheaper FWD technology which just made me feel like I would have been getting so much less for my money. A side reason was also that it’s becoming harder to get a two seat pickup truck which was something I was considering as an alternative to my interest in cars. However, Toyota stopped offering them a few years ago, and other brands were out of the question due to reliability concerns. Regarding my consideration of getting a two seater pickup truck, the 4Runner also catered to that. Fold down the back seats, and I get the space I wanted without having to get a cap separately which is also something I was going to get.

(As an aside, I wonder if I would have been happy with a two seater pickup truck, too. Smaller pickups that I sometimes still see on the road aren’t really being made anymore, so that’s another thing going against my pickup idea.)

But… the 4Runner is so dull. It doesn’t excite me. Sometimes I get excited about going off road, but then I remember I live in Central New Jersey, and I’ve got to go really far just to go off road. The closest road I know of is the road just south of the safari at Six Flags. It’s a dirt road. I haven’t been there yet, but maybe next weekend. It’s hardly an open place to exercise my freedom or a trail to challenge myself, though. I can see myself being bored of that road real fast. I’m aslo a little concerned about being hit by someone hooning their WRX on the road. I might still be able to drive home while their car would be in serious trouble, but it would still do a number on my 4Runner’s body. Anyway, it feels like the 4Runner is out of its natural habitat here. It will never be happy, and it won’t make me happy to drive it.

I was walking to the mailbox last week. A Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ passed by. It sounded so good. I wanted to drive it. It looked good, even from the back. It wasn’t even going fast. Even after getting my 4Runner, I still looked at cars. I really looked at the 86/BRZ. It’s RWD and not super expensive like a Lexus or a BMW or something. I didn’t even know there was a snow mode in the automatic transmission model. It might not be the fastest, most powerful car, but it’s light and fun. It’s more practical than it might seem, too. A part of me really wants to trade in my 4Runner for an 86/BRZ. The stock tires are too slippery for my taste, but I could get better ones for the summer. I then could get snow tires for the winter. That’s something that I didn’t even know was a thing for the year I had my 83 Fairmont. I spun out in my first snow storm in high school. Driving it in snow after that was always a harrowing experience. I even missed a once in a lifetime concert because I wasn’t confident I’d make it there or back in one piece in the snow that night. It didn’t have snow tires, not that I thought I should have had snow tires. I just didn’t know back then. That incident influenced my 4WD/AWD leanings ever since. If my Liberty didn’t fail when it did, I might have gone with the 86/BRZ. If I only had another month, I could have educated myself on what’s possible with RWD. I was already educating myself on cars again. My Liberty hit the 11 years old mark in January. I was already beginning to look at my next car even though I personally hoped it was still a few years away. I needed a little bit more time.

With things the way they are now, though, trading in a solid, dependable vehicle for something that’s still rather reliable but would be about me enjoying it more than anything else isn’t very responsible. I should be happy that this 4Runner will take me through what might be the next great depression. And it really is a great vehicle that does a lot of things that I appreciate. But the other part of it is that it’s a pandemic, and if the coronavirus does kill me, no matter how unlikely, I don’t think I want my last vehicle and my time spent in it to be something that I don’t love. Finally, even if there wasn’t an economic crisis or a public health crisis, I still think I wouldn’t be happy with it. Like I said pretty early on, I think it’s a great vehicle, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

Decisions, am I right? In any case, I’m kind of stuck with my 4Runner for the foreseeable future anyway. I don’t want to get any other vehicle without test driving it first, and that’s not really possible these days.

 

You could try a smaller diameter tire. When I swap to my “street” tires. They are an 1 1/2 smaller, it handles better, better acceleration, and a smoother ride. But will not perform as well on dirt roads or wet. I don’t drive off pavement much and when I do I keep it super slow...

 

Yeah, but then that might throw off the speedometer.

 

True.....

 

Yeah, something along those lines would have been what I was thinking about doing if I got an 86/BRZ, but I would have kept the overall diameter the same. I would get smaller rims but thicker tires so there would be more sidewall. Maybe I'd use the original rims for the winter tires, but I don't really know much about that yet. Maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do that for winter tires.

 

Just eat the loss, trade it in, get a 86. That's what you want. Why pay for something you dislike; plus your '20 will never be worth more than it is right now... well, maybe not right this exact second, but give it a few months for an economic upturn. It'll be worth less when the 2021s come out.

The 86 are sweet cars. If I didn't have such a hard-on for exploring the mountain ranges where I live and taking multi-day trips camping out of the back and didn't have a couple of dogs to haul around and didn't sometimes need to tow stuff and occasionally need 4WD... I'd like to get a 86. I thought pretty hard on them when they came out as the BRZ / Scion. Part of me thinks I still might, as a second vehicle more for the fun of driving than the practicality of driving, if I can find a used one cheap enough. Then again, I am an avid motorcyclist and there's really no fun road in a car that isn't already better on a bike, so maybe that would be a pointless investment to get a car that actually dumbs down the fun stuff.

But whatever you do, fucking research it before you buy. The worst time to start researching a car is after you bought it. You can still take test drives... at least locally. Dunno about NJ. Rent one for a few days to really put it through its paces.

 

Run a tank of high-test Exxon through it and check back. I know you will notice a power increase at least...Maybe air the tires up five or ten above normal. Should notice a more responsive cornering?

 

OP is getting destroyed on his dupe post on t4r.org

 

Thanks for the advice. I might just do it sooner or later.

I did research on the 4Runner before I bought it, but there's only so much a test drive is going to do. I remember reading something about someone who had a Tundra or a Tacoma who had the same sort of realizations after a month or so with it, but then he went to a 4Runner and was happy with it.

I know about the torque dip in the 86, but it's still faster than most everything else on the road. There's not much in the way of hills or mountains for me to climb here in NJ, though. I'm still a ways off from committing to an 86 or anything else, though. Heck, I might go with the Nissan 370Z. Probably not, though. I have heard that the Z stands apart from the rest of Nissan's problems since it's still made in Japan and kept away from Renault influence along with the GTR, but I'm still not sold on it. The 86 does have some sweet trunk space when you fold the back seats, though.

After seeing how you said that test drives are still going on in CA, I looked again here in NJ. It's still spotty it seems, but one of the places in NJ that seems to have (mostly) normal operating practices is in one of NJ's hotspots, Lakewood. I'm not so sure I want to go to Lakewood.

I'll give Exxon a try next time I go to the gas station. Thank you. And I don't know if the tire pressure is going to help so much. The weight of the truck is still going to be there.

Yep...

 

That's such a happy place...so welcoming and helpful.

 

I'm not ashamed to say I pigpiled on his thread over there!!!

 

Another Liberty owner might wave...

 

Research is now showing that the virus really doesn't live long on surfaces. Wipe the wheel with some Lysol, wear your mask, and tell the salesman to wait at his desk, you'll be back in an hour.

I actually had a 17 Taco that I hated the instant I drove it home. I had traded a really nice, simply built 4R in on it. I struggled over whether to eat the money but after about 3 months I couldn't take it, traded in the Taco to get what I really wanted... which was another goddamn 4R, which I then had to build back to what my old one had been. Wasted a ton of money... but was happy. Don't pay for something you don't want, and for sure don't throw money at it to try to make it what you want cause it never will be. Just eat shit now and be done with it.

 

Heh, doubtful... lol

 

OP, it'll be 9 months in for me in June. I came from a 2004 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon and a 2013 Tacoma TRD 4x4. The 4R is so much better made and riding than any vehicle I've owned before. It's usually just me, my wife, and our two small dogs. I sometimes wonder if the 4R is 'too much vehicle' for just us, and is so different from what I was used to, but every time I drive it, it's just so enjoyable. I love that the 2019 lacks all the newer electronic gizmos, I really have no use for all that. Those that do, enjoy your 2020s.

I hope the longer I own my 4R, the harder it will be to part with it.

ps - I have a Pedal Commander I bought last December sitting on the shelf, still haven't installed it...haven't convinced myself yet I need it...I don't feel the 4R lacks power.

 

Gamma,

I've never before seen a comparison between a Caprice and a 4Runner! Methinks you should just minimize your losses on the Runner and get what throws your switch. Life is too short to be unhappy, and it doesn't sound like the Runner is what you want. No harm, no foul other than maybe losing some money. I still miss my FJ some days!

 

Your 4runner is faster than your Jeep was. Look it up.

It sounds like you bought the wrong vehicle.

You bought the wrong vehicle. The 4runner hasn't been described as "exciting" by anyone, ever. It's a rolling brick shit-house. Aftermarket shocks and springs do help with the handling. KDSS equipped vehicles are a little less rolly-poley in the turns, also.

As others have said, I would start working out a plan to get out of the 4runner and get into something you'll like better. It's not the right vehicle for everyone. It's especially not the right vehicle if you were hoping for anything remotely sporty feeling.

Good luck on your next purchase! Let us know what you choose, and test drive the shit out of it!!

 

I think 4 runners are specialty vehicles and people who buy them and love them have done so for a specific reason. Room to pack stuff in and capability and much less power or road manners. I’ve had mine 3 months and out 1500 miles on it and still love it. I just can’t wait to get it on the trail. I think you just need a different car based on what you want in a car or truck. Nothing wrong with that by any means.

 

So is everyone here also on the other one lol

 

"like trying to drive a shopping cart with an elephant in the baby seat through the corner."

I felt the same driving my T4ROR home from the dealer on the twisty hilly 2 lane roads of the Ozarks. My 14 year old Nissan Frontier 4x4 handles the curves better than the stock Off Road.

Doing research here and on the other other board revealed that any suspension lift - spring and shock replacement (Dobsons, Eibach, Bilstein, Kings, Fox, Icon, etc) will make the non-KDSS T4R handle better in the curves, on and off road.

After spending hours reading and researching suspension lifts - I went with the Eibach Pro Truck Lift ($750 shipped + $450 install). Main reason for going with Eibach were the great reviews plus 1 size fits all. Handling is apples and oranges better than what it was. I can now take most curves at 55mph and power out of them.

Regarding the acceleration, the Sprint Booster is a Holy Sh*T experience. Sure no increase in HP but it brings that available HP up almost instantly. I keep mine in Race 6 (Red 6).

Regarding steering wheel feedback - I agree. The steering wheel feel on my 14 year old Frontier is Tight. The T4R is loose. It took some getting used to. There seems to be some play in the 4R steering wheel. I find I just need to do my best to ignore it.

 

I thought this was the nicer 4runner forum. Was I wrong?

No. I suddenly feel so left out.

 

I think Toyota incorporates a little forgiveness into the steering of the T4R. It's a top heavy SUV with ground clearance. You really don't want slight changes in steering wheel input to make the weight shift around. Especially when most of the buying public don't really know how to drive to begin with. The thing about a Frontier is a longer wheel base and the weight distribution is mostly in the center. It will inherently handle better than any SUV. But that said, most people want better shocks to improve the ride and handling on a T4R from the get go. And yes it's definitely not a vehicle for everyone.

 

I would really love to say I didn't do this. But I sold my '16 Trail to a friend, bought a '20 and immediately needed to mod it.

Oops...

I will say the 4Runners are kinda bleh until you get into the modding scene, and customize it (tastefully hopefully, unlike typical jeeps).

However, if it doesn't thrill you, yea man, move on. It's not for everyone.

It sounds like to me by your mention of that dirt road comment that you wanted the 4Runner because of a thought of doing something, but you realize you probably won't do that something. Here's the only advice I can give OP. Don't mod the vehicle. Lots of people mod it hoping to give it that spark, but if you don't have it now, all you'll do it dump money into it and hold off for 3 - 6 months before that feeling returns, and you'll have spent a lot of money to do it. Money, for example, on a downpayment for what you want.

 

im not either.

 

Depending on platform, engine, and overall untested reliability with a new powertrain, I feel like there is a strong possibly it will be the same case as it is with Tacoma’s. 2nd gen Tacoma’s are holding their values incredibly well in comparison to the 3rd gens. Current gen 4runner is pretty bulletproof, new one, who knows. I think us 2014+ owners are in a pretty good boat. But back to topic.

 

nope

 

So get rid of it. It sounds like you hate it.
The 4Runner has a soft pedal on purpose. Toyota made this car to drive off road, you don't want a lot of power fast when off road.
You could always add a pedal commander, but you seem to dislike more than the throttle response.

 

I’m new to 4Runner. 2020 Limited with 1000 miles. I can agree with a number of your observations. But if I compared it to my 2012 Corvette Grand Sport I would be totally disappointed. By the way I bought it in New Jersey at Kerbeck. It isn’t a Liberty or a Vette. If so unhappy with it sell or trade it for what makes you happy. Life is too short. Hoping you find that vehicle. In New Orleans.....

 

LOL this is a blast from the past. I'm enjoying the 4Runner more these days