New Tacoma owner with questions?????

[southtowniceman]

I recently purchased my first Toyota, from my son-in-law. He has had it since new, and never had any problems. It is a 96 Tacoma, 4 wheel drive,5 speed manual tranny, with the larger of the 4 cyl. engines, and it has 80,000 miles. It has been a Florida truck, until I brought it up north. Before I left the south,I changed spark plugs, air filter, and put injector cleaner in two tankfulls of gas. On the 1200 mile trip back, the best mileage I got was 25 mpg. Now that it's up north, I'm getting around 23-25 mpg, at an average speed of 40-50. Is this normal mileage?? The truck runs great, but the exhaust pipe is very black, which to me would indicate the engine is running RICH. Is it ? And if so, what next? No check engine lights either.
Secondly: The engine starts right up when cold and all is well, but if it's warm, it will start right up and then stall. You have to restart it and increase the rpm for a few seconds, then it will idle ok without stalling out. Can anyone shed some light on either of these problems?
One more thing, what service manual would best serve my needs. An actual Toyota factory manual, or the more generic Haines or Chillton. Thanks, Tom

[Flash75]

Tom, You may want to try cleaning the throttle body and the mass air flow sensor. Instructions are here;
http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/mainte...tenancep5.html
I agree the tail pipe shouldn't be black. Cleaning the TB and MAF may help that and the warm starting problem. My truck is a 2004 2 wheel drive extended cab with 2.4 engine with automatic, I can sometimes get 24-25 mpg on trips but a mix of highway and local driving it does 20-23 mpg. Get the factory service manual if you can locate one at a reasonable cost. They sometimes show up on eBay. For generic manuals I use Haynes for most vehicles.

Clifton

[southtowniceman]

Thank's Clifton, I'll clean both and see what happens. I figured the mpg would be better, seeing as my '97 Chevy Tahoe, 4 wheel drive ,auto, V-8, gets about 21-23 mpg on a trip down south. I recon half the cylinders and half the weight doesn't mean twice the mileage Thanks again for the info.

[Brian R.]

Unfortunately, you can't get around the huge frontal area and really bad aerodynamics of a truck (not to mention the 4WD gear).