Mine averages about 4200lbs - no loads, no heavy mods. Milage varies widely - about 0.0001 mpg racing from stoplight to stoplight here in Boulder; sometimes as high as 20 mpg on the highway.

Note: My brother has spent more on repairs to his Exploder in the last year than I've spent on my Runner in 11 years. If you find an older model that's been well taken care of - get it!

 

If I want to get there in record time I borrow my wifes Avalon. When the place I want to go is on top of the mountain. The poor old tired 3.0 seems to work just fine.
jim

 

you guys compain to much...

 

My opinion is that the 3VZ-E sucks balls. Coming from the Mitsubishi you described, you may very well be happy with it. Heck, find one for sale and go give it a spin. If you've driven one that's unmodified you'll quickly get an idea of how they will perform.

Why do I think they suck? Mine had the headgasket problem, but my VIN # fell outside of the range covered by the recall. The rebuilt engine I dropped in there for replacement blew up after less than 30K miles. I dropped in a better, remanufactured engine and decided to mod the hell out of it. After custom exhaust, headers, ported & polished heads, and a hi-input air intake, I can honestly say -- I wasted a lot of freakin money. It is a little quicker, but I've had residual issues as a result of some of my mods (headers in particular) that have cost me additional dollars. I also re-geared (probably the best mod I've done), but it matters little. It's still a dog. King, I feel your pain. I make that drive up to Flagstaff and other places north every weekend in the summer. It gets there, but man, it works really hard to climb those hills.

Any additional money I put into this vehicle will go to improved off-road performance. I'm done with the egine mods and will hopefully be retiring it from daily driver status by this time next year. I plan to keep it around forever as my 4x4 beast, but I'm very much looking forward to a newer model 4Runner.

Ed

 

i like mine fine, high teens for mileage and enough power, i have a car for speed. but if this thing ever blows a HG its gettin a 3.4 so fast

 

1. If a 3vze is getting any less than 15mpg with stock tire size for any reason at all, something is wrong with the system. (Yeah 15 mpg redlining every gear, stop and go traffic, with a slush-matic.) Any less than 18 on the highway and again it's got issues....

2. Pre 91.5 3vze's do not have the HG issues from what I understand as well.

3. If the HG does go out, it would be stupid NOT to put HG STUDS in place of the head bolts....and if you got enough cash go get some cams and heads from DOA...

The 3.0 is indeed not very fast, but it IS reliable and it will get you from point a to point b nicely with decent mileage when running properly. Oh and they will still spank a base model Exterra on 0-65 mph even with my 500lb sound system.

btw - before this dumb exhaust I put on, my truck would break the 100mph mark quite easily, but it would just take a while for it to do so....(the 2.25" exhaust took away some highway power and put it on the bottom of 1st)


As far as modifying for power, I believe Dan was doing a 3vzfe head swap. This will give the 3L 24v instead of 12 and since you need a 5vze intake for it, you can also toss on a trd supercharger if you like heatsoak and no intercooler.... Also the 24v heads reduce the compression ratio to about 9.1:1 or so - PRIME for forced induction.