First offroad, el. 13,124’ [Summit County, CO] - Compare/Contrast 5th Gen 4Runner

[PACruiser]

Engine Braking. Or lack thereof. Nearly a complete lack thereof, compared to the 4Runner’s V6. I haven’t heard anyone talking about this! Even for on-road driving, manually downshifting provides little braking effect.

Interesting. I used the manual shifting last week on some steep down hills and overall it was very smooth and seemed to work well. However, I wasn't towing anything. One thing I did notice is I needed to drop 1+ gears quickly until I hit resistance and then it worked as expected.