Author Archive for Jason Lancaster

Tundra Towing 101

Most people buy their trucks with a specific purpose in mind. Some people bought their Tundra with the intention of taking advantage of its off-road capabilities, either to hit the trails or maybe take a quiet camping trip into the wilderness. Others wanted to use the cargo bay to haul oversized items, toolboxes, or whatever their jobs might call upon them to do.

There is a third group of people who picked up a Toyota Tundra because they wanted to take advantage of its towing capacity. Pickup trucks usually make excellent tow vehicles due to their strong frames and long wheelbases – two very important aspects of safe towing. Since many of the trailers that are towed by pickup truck owners are quite large, such as boat and camping rigs, it is important to understand some of the basic theory behind proper towing technique in order to be as safe as possible out on the highway.

TundraHeadquarters Meet-Up in Georgia

The first-ever TundraHeadquarters.com Meet-Up will be in Marietta, Georgia, on April 25th, 2009.

TundraNetwork member TundraV8Yamaha is the event organizer.

Please visit the new Tundra Headquarters Events page for more information.

Special thanks to Erik for taking the bull by the horns…did I mention free t-shirts for RSVPing and attending?

Land Air Sea GPS Tracking Key

This is just like Spy v. Spy – a $175 GPS tracking unit that you can hide somewhere in your vehicle or on your person. It will:

1. Tell you exactly where you or your vehicle was (within a couple of meters, anyways) for every second the unit is active (or at least until the 2 batterys run out).
2. Track your vehicle’s top speed and average speed, as well as the vehicle’s speed at any given location.
3. Interface all of this data with Google Earth, so you can get some visual idea of where the tracking unit was at any point during the tracking period.
4. Record everything that people nearby are thinking using the revolutionary “mind-read” circuit. (OK – maybe not, but still…)

GPS tracking key from Land Air Sea. It includes a magnet for easy attachment.

While this is technically for tracking your own movements – say figuring out where and how often you drive your truck to make deliveries, for instance – the real market is undoubtedly spying.

New 2009 2010 Toyota Tundra 20 Inch Wheels

Toyota just announced a new set of 5-spoke 20″ rims for the 2009 and 2010 Tundra. They’re cast aluminum and machined for strength, and they’re available as an accessory from your local Toyota dealer.

New 20 inch rims for the 2009 and 2010 Toyota Tundra.

We’re usually not big fans of buying OEM accessories – OEM’s (that’s orginal equipment manufacturers) tend to be quite a bit more expensive than the after market.

OEM dealers tend to be more a little more greedy as well.

However, these wheels have an MSRP of

UniChip Performance Chip Engine Tuner

Toyota does a few things differently than most of their competitors. While some of these differences are quite good (see industry leading quality and reliability for decades), some of these differences are, well, weird. Toyota doesn’t offer special orders, for instance. Toyota charges extra for floor mats on all of their vehicles (weird). Toyota also locks down their engine computer control systems making it almost impossible for aftermarket performance chip manufacturers to “crack” the codes and start playing with the motor’s performance settings.

Enter Unichip. Since Toyota locks their computer control systems, it’s hard (maybe impossible) to create an engine tuner (aka programmer) that will interface with the computer and change ignition timing, fuel delivery, etc. Jet, Superchips, and others don’t offer programmers for a lot of Toyotas because it’s just too expensive and/or difficult to crack the code and design one.

Unichip Performance Chip

Unichip bypasses the problem by interfacing with the signals that are passed to the engine control module (ECM).