This may not be helpful to your question, but we towed an E21 for several years with what appears to be an identical Tacoma. It did the job, but not well in hilly country. We would occasionally get trapped in second gear for long climbs if anything slowed us down to where third gear torque was too low. Also, we found the transmission temperature would get uncomfortably high on long climbs, so I put in a far larger after market cooler which kept a lid on that issue.
FWIW, we moved to an f150 with the 2.7, and love it. The difference in towing performance is way beyond expectations. We could have stuck with the Tacoma, but it would not have lasted for the rest of my towing career, so since at least one more truck would be needed, we went with the Ford. We would not go back. Also, the F150 gets better mileage than the Tacoma did. Ours was the 4 liter v6.
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