Toyota advances its D-4S port- and direct-injection system with the technology’s installation in the new Tacoma midsize pickup.
“What we’re doing is we have a slit on the side of our injector and we’re blowing that carbon off,” Mike Sweers, the ’16 Tacoma’s chief engineer, tells WardsAuto here during the truck’s media preview. “If we tried to use just high pressure, using just the nozzle itself, you would clean the bottom of that nozzle.
Since the carbon grows from the outside and comes around, you would still plug up that injector. So by cleaning on the outside of that, we get a clean injector all the time.
Drivers may hear the self-cleaning taking place during an idle, and the process could last from 10 seconds to as long as 10 minutes, depending on driving patterns and the amount of build-up on the injectors.
When you go into a hot-idle situation, the system is going to look at the time that it ran, the number of cycles the injectors went through, the temperature of the injectors and then it goes into a self-cleaning mode. “Because we have the port injection, I can continue idling the engine without having any side effects.
“You stop at a light (and) it may clean for 10 seconds, you’re going to take off and stop at another light and it’s going to clean for (another) 10 seconds,” he says, noting the engine will deliver torque when a driver wants it and shut off the cleaning mode.
The next-generation D-4S is paired with the next generation of Toyota’s 2GR engine family, the 3.5L 2GR-FKS. The previous iteration of 2GR, 2GR-FSE, is a 4-time Ward’s 10 Best Engines winner.
“One of my favorite parts of the engine is we eliminated the exhaust manifold on the engine and put that into the head of the cylinder head itself,” Sweers says. “So by doing that we can cool the exhaust gas. And by cooling the exhaust gas I don’t have to pump any raw fuel into the catalyst to keep the catalyst cool, because I’m not heating the catalyst up as much.”
A side benefit of the design: the catalytic converter is closer to the head, making theft less likely.
“You can’t get up there and take them,” Sweers says. “It’s amazing what you can do with a Sawzall,” he says of a reciprocating saw often used by thieves to cut off easily accessible catalytic converters.
The Tacoma’s 3.5L V-6 makes 278 hp and 265 lb.-ft. (359 Nm) of torque. The outgoing ’15 Tacoma’s 4.0L V-6 produces 236 hp and nearly identical torque. The 3.5L’s horsepower and torque peaks at 6,000 and 4,600 rpm, respectively, compared with 5,200 and 4,000 for the 4.0L.
The new V-6, combined with new 6-speed automatic and 6-speed manual transmissions, improves the Tacoma’s fuel economy by up to 2 mpg (0.8 km/L) city and 3 mpg (1.3 km/L) highway. The biggest increase is seen in highway fuel economy in the automatic-equipped 2-wheel-drive Tacoma, which is rated at 24 mpg (9.8 L/100 km) vs. 21 mpg (11.2 L/100 km) in the similar outgoing model.
Test drive the 2016 Tacoma today! Stop in at Toyota of Killeen; we’ll be looking forward to it.