302, T-5, an 8" rear-end and what gears?

[scouttrooper]

Hello men. I am building a tremendously spunkey 302 to be mated with a ford racing T-5. I have a nice rear-end but don't trust the gears. I'd like to put a traction-lock third member and am struggling with the gear choice. Their T-5 gears range from a 2.95 1st to a .63 5th gear. I was thinking 4.10's. This is the 1st ford we've dealt with. Everyone I know is leaning toward 3.55's. They keep asking me if I'm racing it. I have a heavy foot around town, but am a responsible guy. I sure don't need to go 150 mph or anything, but a very comfortable 80 mph would be good. I just enjoy feeling a healthy push from stoplights and such. Chances are, I'll never get it to hook up with street tires anyhow. What do all of you think? Thanks for the opinions...

Lance

 

[WantaGT]

It all depends. In my personal opinion, 3.55's just aren't quite enough. I have 3.73's in my daily driver LX and love them. Decent on the freeway, about 2300 rpm at 70-75. It's above the loudest part of my exhuast so it's a nice cruise. If you plan to take it to the track 4.11's might be ok, but they are steep. First gear for me now is only good for the other side of the intersection, I couldn't imagine it being even taller. It's up to personal preference, but with that deep overdrive and spunkey (which I assume means the power band is shifted up a little bit) I would go with at least 3.73's. But what do I know?

 

[rbohm]

3.73 gears are about as steep as you want to go. in fact 3.50's would be better as first gear would be more usable. with 4.11's you would be wanting to shift almost as soon as you launch the car.

 

[TrickStang37]

what size tire are you planning on running? how high is the motor gonna be taching up to (shiftpoints)? what power level? what trap speeds are we looking at?

those questions are important in helping pick a proper gear. that being said, i ran 3.73's in my 93 and on street tires first and second gears would get zero traction at the track on hard shifts. I was trapping 109's, 5spd, 300-310rwhp @ 5600-5700. with 245/50/16's it would tach out at 120ish @ 6000 rpm(4th). for track, 4.10's would have been perfect, but slicks would have been in order.

 

[gjz30075]

I really believe 3.55s will be too tall, with the 2.95 first gear and .63 5th. A friend of mine has this trans with 4.11 gears and 225/60 x 15 tires and its really right on the money for all types of driving. About 2500 at 70. He's got a 289 with 'K' code specs. With signifcantly more power, you can probably drop back down to 3.7X gears.

 

[S-Car-Go]

If you have a T5z (2.95 1st) I'd go with 3.80 with a 25" tire. That's about the same as a 3.35 1st gear with 3.40 gears. This is what I have and I love it.

Remember it's about the entire combination (trans gear x rear gear x tire dia.)

 

[scouttrooper]

To complicate matters...

We are kind of making this up as we go along. We haven't swapped out the fron spindles and brakes yet, nor do we have the 8" rear-end under the car. I am planning on measuring after these are in place to see what wheels/tires I can even get away with. Not having mustang experience is somewhat crippling. I know what I'd like to put there; I'm thinking 15 x 8 (maybe 16) torq thrust II's. This still doesn't tell us what tires we can get away with. If I'm going to have trouble wasting the tires in any configuration, does it matter which we use? We will probably have a 10K redline, but useable to about 6500 or so. We're thinking about 320-350 HP. It's my understanding that the original HiPo setup was only about 270 HP. Is that true?

 

[scouttrooper]

...and by the way...

I restored this car about 4 years ago as the 6 cyl car that my father-in-law bought. Anything would have been more fun than that. The open top has been refreshing, but putzing around with an inline-6 has been nearly unbearable. I can't wait to feel that seat shove me in the back. This will be a vast improvement over what we've been dealing with.