I went to where ricks has the website with the 4.77 gears but he says to go with the 4.57 since the 4.77 have a high rate of breaking. Is this true?

 

[QUOTE=rikhemi,Feb 24 2005, 07:58 AM]I went to where ricks has the website with the 4.77 gears but he says to go with the 4.57 since the 4.77 have a high rate of breaking.

 

so imagine you get the gears for 300, you then can ship them to one of the board members of s2ki which ive heard of or go to a shop and do it for a 150-300 dollars. Is there anything else you would need with the 4.77 gears to make it work correctly and help it not break..

 

The OEM install kit is needed ($100) and I would definitely recommend a yellow box to calibrate the speedometer. Let me know if you need the info for the person who installs them for $150.

 

Calculus is just a description of the real world. The car itself "does the calculus", you might say. Changing the gear ratio does change the shift points, and it does have some small effects (both good and bad for performance) but it doesn't really make the car faster. Yes, it may give you more "kick" in second gear, but since you can't go as fast in second gear you have to upshift sooner so you drop in the powerband AND you have less overall gear ratio, so in the end it doesn't help you.

Another example -- have you ever driven a 4wd with a "low range" gear reducer? If torque and gearing actually made the car faster, that would be the acceleration champion of the world: a high torque truck engine with a really extreme gear ratio. But no, "low range" is "granny gear", and very, very slow.

I don't have a problem with people choosing to swap gears on their own cars -- they are their own cars. I just have a problem with them spouting BS about how it makes the car accelerate better. As long as the gear ratio is in a reasonable range (and that range is quite wide), then it doesn't make much difference to anything except the shift points. The day that the gearset actually supplies power instead of absorbing it -- that's the day it will make the car accelerate better.

 

If you can find someone to install them for < 300, that's VERY cheap, and Id be a bit worried about receiving a hack job.

Id expect at LEAST $600 installed.

I've got the Comptech Reinforced Differential housing, which should help. That's the only part available right now to strengthen the differential.

 

Again, I think you're missing the point a bit.

I think the disagreement is between our definition of "accelerate better". Your looking at it from the perspective a track lap time, 1/4 mile time, or a 0-60 run. In all of those situations, average power dominates your statistic.

*My* definition of "accelerate better" is the following:

You're driving on the road at *ANY* given speed. You decide you want to pass someone. You downshift to a lower gear to pass. In this scenario, you rarely are accelerating hard for more than one gear. More often then not, in this situation, you are going to select the same gear if you had the 4.77s or the 4.10s. Not only will you be faster here with the 4.77s, it will be more *fun* due to the higher instantaneous acceleration.

What I mean by "doing the Calculus" is that human beings don't experience reality as averaged quantities, like you describe. It's much more impressive and fun to experience stronger instantaneous forces, like I describe. When I'm driving my car, i'd be VERY hard pressed to give you a single situation where I've downshifted to third with the 4.77s, where I would have shifted to 2nd with the 4.10s.

Or, how about this, I *ALWAYS* shift to second on any right/left hand turn at a light that I'm not stopped at. In this real-world example, the shorter gearset is always desireable, because you're going to get up to speed into your powerband MUCH faster. It's too much of a pain in the ass and hard on your transmission to go down to first in this situation.

You still seem to be ignoring that there is a non-trivial benefit in first gear. Due to our lack of low-end torque, anything that gets us to our powerband faster makes a significant improvement..

 

I got the diff back Friday and put it back in on Saturday. The installer installed the gears wrong, so I had to take the diff back out on Sunday. We had to re-open it up. Basically, my friend has to re-install the gears. I wish I would have just paid the extra $ in the first place to do the install so that it would have been done right and I wouldnt have extra headaches and sore arms!

Ryan

 

Faster lap times don't lie. They don't necessarily indicate a more streetable car, but they definitely indicate a faster car. Bottom line is, shorter gears don't make the car faster (in general).

Yes, from time to time you will get into a mismatch where you have to short-shift or something, and in that case, for that particular corner, a different gear ratio would work better. But that is just as likely to be true with 4.77 as it is with 4.10.

As for first gear -- who cares about first gear? Its only purpose is to start the car off from a dead stop. And if you can spin the tires with stock gearing, then you can't get any more torque down to the track anyway.

Like I said before, if you like the 4.77 gearing then that's great. Install it and enjoy it. Just don't make claims that your car and physics can't back up.

 

The 4.77 do not, in any way shape or form, make the car faster. The simply redistribute power to the lower end. Now, on a shorter, twisty track, you may get some better times b/c you can accelerate out of the corner faster, BUT they will hurt you in areas with long straight aways or (if someone is inclined to street race) longer runs on a hwy. All in all, there is NO INCREASE IN POWER....nuff said.