I didn't order gears yesturday

 

What exactly do the gears do? Do they improve 1/4 mile times? I don't understand how it works. I know it shortens or lengthens your gears but what does it do speed-wise? Also, what is our stock gears ... 4.10? And does that mean they are longer or shorter than 4.57?

 

A 'bigger' gear i.e. going from 4.10 to 4.44, 4.57. 4.77 will give your car an increase in 'virtual torque'. Obviously since you are not doing anything to the engine, it does not affect the hp/ tq numbers being generated from the engine, but similar to a bicycle gear, if you have more teeth per inch (on the back), less torque is needed to accelerate, thereby making it much easier for our torqueless wonders to accelerate.

SO, you will accelerate faster, and also accelerate much easier from a dead stop.

The drawback is that this lowers your top end. This also means that the car's acceleration will diminish at a lower speed than with the original 4.10 final gear. (at 120 mph, the car will not accelerate as fast with the higher gear as it did with the stock 4.10 because the motor/ gear combo is reaching it's peak).

Realize also:
* Speedometer reading will be affected, and that is why the sell the 'little yellow box" (through Rick's Accessories).
* RPM's will be higher at any speed than with the stock gears, and the bigger the final gear, the higher the rpms. This could mean cruising at 70 mph at 6500 rpm depending on the gear set being used.
If you are curious about how this will affect your rpms, check this site:
http://www.turnzero.com/technical_resource...gear_calculator

BTW I've seen a stock 350Z start to gain on an otherwise stock S2000 with 4.77's at about 80 mph. This would not normally happen with the 4.10 gears. BTW the S2000 STOMPED the 350 up to about 60. The 4.77's are a little drastic, and the 4.57 is supposed to be a nice median between the 4.77 (which was a little high, and took too much top speed away) and the 4.44 (which was an improvement from stock, but just not enough).

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.

 

Nice post. That's a pretty good summary although I'd like to add a couple things.

I may be wrong, but I'm really not sure that shorter gears hurts your top end accelleration, up until the point that you run out of gearing anyways. 4.77's on an AP1 doesn't run out of gearing until around 139 mph so I'm not really sure that's a factor. Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.

The other thing is that I think the increased rpm's for highway cruising is sometimes exagerated. 4.77's at 80 mph (on an AP1) still puts you under 5K rpm's. It's a little higher but not that bad. Now if you routinely cruise at 80+ then it might get annoying.

For a SC application, 4.77's might be a little extreme. I ran them and loved them, but the 1-2 shift was very challenging. 4.57's might be a better combination for a SC setup if you don't want to be so extreme.

For a N/A setup, I think 4.77's are a better choice than 4.57's unless you're strickly doing 1/4 miles (one more shift). A little more low end and no real drawback as far as I'm concerned.

My $.02

 

I wanna lower my acecel off the line. My 1/4 mile time or 0-60... by a decent amount of I don't think the highway 7000 rpm is worth it.

 

You know 7k rpm's in 6th is gonna put you in triple digits

 

Good summary. 4.77s are perfect for N/A. S/C or Turbo 4.57s or 4.10s are better.

My 4.57s are only 500 rpms higher than stock at 80mph. Of course that is with an 04 tranny.

 

don't forget that you can get the whole rear diff in a raffle from hardtopguy right now... check my sig

Later,

Dewain