Well, I just plucked a 4th gen V8 from your area after being in a 3rd gen for 7+ years. My 3rd gen has a pretty fresh OME suspension and had all new OEM ball joints + tie rods installed. It drives really great. I'm not comparing apples to apples yet but here's my $.02
The 4th gen I bought is clean but it is at 160k miles on original suspension (No XREAS). It drives very nice but I can definitely feel that it does not recover from bumps as crisply as my 3rd gen does. That's more of a commentary on condition of the suspension and not 3rd vs. 4th. The 4th gen is roughly 800 lbs heavier though. It's a significantly larger vehicle, moreso than I realized. Mine drives much more like a real truck than my 3rd gen which I feel is closer to a Ranger or S-10 than a newer Tacoma in terms of size. The 4th gen will be much kinder to passengers and is a more comfortable vehicle. Driving both home, the V8 got 18 mpg highway while the 3rd gen got 19.8 mpg (my best tank yet). In searching for the one, I did also drive a 4th gen that was lifted with newer Rough Country brand components. That one wallowed less than mine but was not what I'd describe as crisp. Rough Country stuff is not known to be great. That was the first 4th gen I drove and the steering felt very light to me. After learning more about 4th gens and driving the one that I bought, I think adding an aftermarket camber/caster adjustable UCA would have resolved that. Caster heavily influences steering feel and adding more caster would make the wheel heavier again. The steering weight feels natural in the one that I bought at stock ride height.
The 3rd gen is much more nimble and easy to place on the road. I think refreshing the 4th gen will fix a lot of the parity here in terms of feeling confident in the front end and overall planted feel of the vehicle. I underestimated how much larger and heavier the 4th gen is. The V8 is really sweet and I'm switching it up to possibly tow a car. I think I'll grow to love the 4th gen but it did make me realize how great the size of the 3rd gen is for a Body-on-Frame SUV. 800 lbs is a huge difference.
I am also pretty picky about how my cars handle/feel. My hobby is autocrossing my fun car and it's made me very sensitive to suspension changes. I finally got my 3rd gen feeling perfect and it's time to sell, lol. The 4th will be a great platform to work through too. I think my lesson learned is to refresh stuff sooner than waiting until it absolutely needs to be done.
