GX460 on 35″ tires vs 4Runner on 34″ tires. On road comparison, off-road comparison, and all issues you may experience.
Hey guys welcome to sandy cats today we’re going to be comparing a 2022 gx 460 premium to a 2021 trd uh off-road edition we’ve had these vehicles for a little bit over a year now and both of these vehicles a lot of have seen a lot of highway driving they’ve done a few two-week expeditions mostly off-road and a lot of multi-day expeditions they have both been
Slightly jumped just for testing purposes and you know they’ve they’ve been beat up a bit so both these vehicles are pretty much fully modded out to where i think you want to be modded out to for you know to tackle all type of terrain where you’re not going crazy on overbuilding it the gx is on 35s the foreigners on 34s and the only reason for that is because the
Same amount of effort it takes to put 35s on a gx is the same amount of effort it takes to put 34s on a foreigner once you get to 35s there’s a lot more work that needs to be done so i’ll have a full mod list at the end of the video but that’s pretty much it these these things are built as close to evenly as possible thank you so the first thing i want to discuss
Is the on-road performance a lot of you guys are going to be spending 90 plus percent of your time on road um so that’s something to consider as well you know the biggest thing is the gx has a v8 the foreigner has a v6 so you’re gonna feel that you’re going to feel that a lot when you go to bigger tires this thing gets very very sluggish the v8 handles the 35s
Pretty damn well to the point where we haven’t even regarded yet i’m not sure if we need to this is regier and it’s still slower so that’s that’s a big benefit the next benefit is you have the luxury the 2022 gx elise is super luxurious this vehicle it feels like a german like a new german car honestly inside you have all the tech features i’d want plus you have
The air conditioned seats beautiful leather and my the most important thing to me personally the biggest decision making factor for me is the steering response i didn’t expect it to be such a drastic change but this vehicle um the gx it has the steering is somehow tuned differently than a foreigner even though a lot of the components are the same so therefore what
You get is you get a much more responsive steering wheel it feels like a really nice new age car to drive versus this feels like a truck from 20 years ago which really it is right and that’s that’s a big deal on-road honestly i prefer to drive this and you could you feel like you’re driving much more sportier on road with this vehicle it feels fantastic the other
Thing is kdss with the foreigners you have an option to choose kdss or not with the gx you have to get kdss for on-road performance kdss is fantastic it makes you feel super stable it works great for off-road uh we’ll discuss that in a second and the last thing is gas mileage which may be the only big fault you know and the only reason why i might go in the for the
Foreigner over gx even though considering onward performance is gas mileage once you live these things especially this right now is getting on average 12 to 13 miles a gallon and it requires premium gas this requires regular gas and it is getting an average for 14 15 miles a gallon sometimes even more so it’s a big difference this is a full-time four-wheel drive
System whereas this is a two-wheel drive system meaning on pavement i’m in two wheel drive 99 of the time on this vehicle i don’t have an option but to be in four wheel drive on this vehicle so therefore that’s another thing that depending i guess where you live maybe the four-wheel drive is necessary all the time for most people i don’t think it is so this is a
Nicer option for me however the other thing to consider is this is going to eat more gas because of it and that’s another reason for the mile per gallon drop so now we’re going to talk about off-road performance and the first thing i’ll discuss is kdss my 2019 forerunner i pulled the after tearing my hair out i ended up pulling the kdss system out of the vehicle
This foreigner we purchased specifically without kdss gx doesn’t give me that option so if i want to get rid of kdss i got to pull it out it’s not hard to pull out it’s pretty easy kds is a controversial topic so i’ll kind of address it a little bit now kitty assess is better than sliced bread on road it’s awesome it’s fantastic kdss is great for fairly easy trails
Where you’re not going 60 miles an hour but you’re going 25 miles an hour on fire roads um you know in the desert you know the stuff that a lot of people go and that’s their limit kds is actually great for that kdss starts becoming a problem when you’re going really fast off-road but there’s a solution for that is the dr kdss switch and but kdss really starts
Becoming a problem in rocks when you want to start doing extreme extreme rock crawling then kdss may become a problem because you can’t go long travel you can’t start heavily modifying your vehicle so that’s something to consider for most people i think it is a plus though okay next topic is going to be lockers the gx only doesn’t come with a front rear locker it
Only comes with a center locker which is okay for a certain type of terrain um but if you’re going to start doing more harder terrain you need a rear locker or a front locker and i’m not going to get into you know how all this works it’s a very long conversation but short version is if you’re going to start doing rock crawling and you plan to you know be crawling
Where your tires are off the ground a lot you’re going to need a front and rear lock or at least a rear locker so that’s another downside of the gx at this point this already has a front locker as well since we were geared or we threw a front locker in if you end up going big tires and re-gearing that’s the time you put a locker in and you probably will want to
Put a locker into your gx at that point but plug and play that locker may not be necessary for a lot of you guys the next thing is tires once you go over 33-inch tires you have to modify a vehicle um you can’t just plug and play anything over 33 inch tires in either of these vehicles but you’re not doing anything extreme to go a little bit bigger so for me to go 34s
On this and 35s on this i pretty much have to do the same thing and i’ll make a video on that but the short version here is a gx will let you get 35s on it versus a 400 will let you get 34s on it before you have to start going into the extremes it’s fairly easy to get get the 35s on the gx and that’s mostly because of the way the body is shaped and it doesn’t have
The additional fender around the fender around the well um so something to consider if you’re trying to go big tires easy and fast you know gx will get you bigger tires plus it has the v8 to push those tires a little faster next off-road thing we should discuss is weight the sticker the payload capacity sticker on this 400 says 880 pounds on the gx it says 1 315
Pounds which tells me i could load this up more and go have fun so because because honestly with all the aftermarket stuff on these vehicles i’m assuming there’s about 500 to 700 pounds especially with the rooftop tents um of just permanent weight on it already plus fridges gear people and you i’m definitely over the payload capacity on the foreigner i’m probably
Pretty close to gx the problem is i built 95 of these modifications myself i installed them um other than maybe like gears and lockers and everything i pulled out of this gx under underneath said foreigner in reality a lot of those gi a lot of this gx is a foreigner with a nicer body and you know a v8 so they put a v8 engine on this thing which is a couple hundred
Pounds heavier they’re giving you a bigger payload but the parts that are prone to breaking off-road on a forerunner like the steering rack the tie rods the gut the spindles those things are still the same here so therefore that’s something to consider as well you’re probably if you start off-roading this and taking this on certain type of trails especially you
Know more advanced trails you’re probably gonna have to do certain upgrades much faster and some of those upgrades are not cheap at all this vehicle we bent the spindle the top is bent right now by about an inch we’re waiting for a gusseted spindle to come in and it was on a very easy obstacle that honestly i would never expect a spindle to bend especially if i was
In this foreigner so the weight of that engine up front and you know everything we did there of course on bigger tires makes certain parts here weaker if you put basically the same parts here and maybe it’s because of that payload sticker as well because you’re putting more weight in that’s just something to consider again that wouldn’t deter me from buying this
Vehicle not even close but it would tell me that i’m probably gonna have to do certain upgrades much faster than you know most people expect to do them if you’re going to off-road let’s talk about one other issue in general for off-roading once you start putting more weight and bigger tires on any vehicle you need to start monitoring your transmission temperatures
Neither of these two vehicles have gauges so you need to put something aftermarket i use scan gauge and with the foreigner once we had everything on it was overheating a bit it was getting hot it wasn’t overheating we put a 56 dollar training cooler in it dropped it back to normal temps on this vehicle i don’t think i almost ever touched 200 degrees on pavement
And maybe 220 to 25 off-road for a couple of seconds at the max which i’m very very happy with um this vehicle we put that same cooler in as we put in here and i’m paving right now it’s getting 220 to 230 within 20 minutes the second it touches dirt it is 250 which is high so we’re gonna have to be tackling that issue still i’m going to be adding another cooler
In here with a fan this grille has a lot of plastic that is from the factory blocking the airflow so we’re going to be dealing with that too keep in mind this is a v8 it gets hotter under the hood and it looks like there’s not that much ability for airflow to go through there so that is something to consider as well i’m just throwing it out there this is a this
Is not a reason not to buy this vehicle it’s just something you really need to understand that you’re going to be dealing with training overheating issues until you you know spend a lot of time resolving them if you decide to start modifying this vehicle all right and i guess the other thing for off-road the last thing which is a minor detail for off-road is the
Hatches this hatch on the foreigner opens up on the gx it opens sideways the only reason that’s an something to consider or i guess just so you’re aware of is the fact that it opens up gives you an automatic little mini awning gives you a little bit of cover from the rain or shade when you’re cooking or whatever so that’s just a little minor thing that you know i
Really really like about the foreigner versus the gx my final conclusions for me personal at least if i want a vehicle that is going to be a daily driver first it’s going to seem mostly pavement modified it’s going to feel great and fun to drive still this feels great and fun to drive on 35s because the steering wheel input i guess somehow makes it so you don’t
Feel the floatiness of the 35s it still drives almost like it’s stock honestly whereas this vehicle on 34 is that steering wheel really doesn’t feel that good on 34s it’s not as fun to drive i want a vehicle that is i can still go on you know two weeks even if i want to with the family and over landing trips expeditions whatever especially if i’m alone that means
I’m not going on hard trails and that’s going to be the life of the vehicle it’s going to be a daily driver and a weekend getaway vehicle or maybe even once a year twice a year two week long expeditions with the family on beautiful gorgeous roads off-road roads i take this vehicle and i wouldn’t even think twice about it however if you want a vehicle that is going
To slowly be getting built and built up and that you want to start increasing the the difficultiness of the off-road terrain you’re going to some that you want to climb on rocks with and you don’t want to spend a ton more money after you buy it from the factory this is the vehicle i get it already comes in the rear locker doesn’t have the v8 which means it’s not
Going to be as heavy on those steering components that are fairly weak so this is going to be much cheaper in the long run if i want to do harder trails now um if you have the money and you really want to go crazy then i can go back to this for off-road stuff right but when you go to this and you want to start getting into hard off-road stuff you need to put
The lockers in and you’re going to regier that time anyways that’s going to be very costly you’re going to start having to really upgrade your you’re going to pull the kdss out so you just spend a couple thousand bucks with lexus for no reason and you’re going to have to start really upgrading your steering components which can get into the you know up to the tens
Of thousands of dollars just to make sure that you’re not breaking stuff hardcore when you’re off-road and that’s something you don’t really have to do for much you know for for this vehicle unless you really really go to the extremes so just two ways to look at it you know for most people i would recommend the gx unless you want this to be your a toy if this is
Going to be your toy then you know the foreigner is the way to go
Transcribed from video
2022 GX460 vs 2021 4Runner. Similar modifications. On-road and Off-road perspective. By Sandy Cats
