thanks for the feedback folks!
Glad to report that we made our Solar Eclipse viewing trip to Arkansas and back with the 4runner not skipping a damn beat for the 37+ hours we spent on the road! Super stoked about it. Need to total up the miles, but it was probably a little north of 2000 miles we racked up since friday.
The AC was on for literally 80% of the time and worked amazingly cold with 0 issues.. could the cycling on/off still be an issue? Very likely... but for the time time being I feel like I'm just going to let it be.
Ended getting somewhere around 14mpg, which I was super ecstatic about considering that I was fully loaded inside and out with camping gear and supplies, water , extra fuel, and we were doing north of 70mph quite a bit. I was expecting way worse considering my last calculation was something like 11.8 mpg lol.
Now I'm scrambling to unpack and repack so my brother and I can go do 3 more nights of camping for the Grildlife event down in South Carolina.