Everything you ever wanted to know about gears

so does your engine work harder with 4.10s or 3.27s?

It will work harder with 3.27s. 4.10 gives higher gearing so less torque for a given gear.

Slider, Thank you !!!
These were great and very accurate posts

Glad I could help. I just know that a lot of people were very confused about gears. When I first started I did not really know either. As I saw more and more conflicting info over the years I decided to figure all this stuff out once and for all. Now I left a lot of stuff out, but the stuff I covered was the basic stuff that every one gets confused about.

thanks very helpful

Slider, how would you say you came about all that information? How do you learn that kind of stuff?! I am HORRIBLE at math hahah. Nice post

A lot of years of listening to others, a lot of years of college both learning and doing (I will not even say how many ), and a lot of time and effort thinking about it and researching this stuff.

An engine works harder with 3.27's than with 4.10's...

Here's an excerpt from Sliders original post:
"Each part in the driveline system requires 1.25 times as much power to be accelerated when switching to the 4.10 gears."

Within each transmission gear, the engine will be turning more rpms to achieve the same speed with 4.10's ... isn't that more work.

Nice post Slider.

My head hurts

so 3.27s work and engine/transmission harder that 4.10s?

Well, that's true too! More parts have to move faster. But from the engine point of view, taller gears is like shifting from 3rd to 2nd gear, you release the engine by gearing up !

Nice post Very informative

Well, does an engine work harder with 4.10's or 3.27's. That is a tough one. I would say that it in the end it stays the same.

In theory the 4.10's would reduce the load seen by the engine. You are getting a mecahnical advantage with the gears, and that is going to give you more torque at the wheels for the same engine rpm. So it would reduce the load at a given engine rpm, but you now have to rev the engine higher to get the rear wheels up to the same speed as with 3.27's. So now you car is turning more rpms which increases the power robbed by friciton. Now that is just thinking about driving at a constant speed. When you start accelerating you are going to run up against the losses from inertia of the driveline. So you are now going to loss a little power there which requires the engine to work a little harder than before.

It would seem that in the end all this stuff would balance out and there would really be no difference, atleast not anything to worry about. Well that is what makes sense to me any ways.

I would say it works less..... Ask people who went to 4.10's from 3.27's most will tell you there city gas millage went up. if the millage went up the engine is not working as hard to move the car

I can't tell with my 4.10's. I like driving the car so much now that I cannot keep my foot out of the pedal, and that leads to worse gas milage

man this is killing my college student brain lol

Great Information Slider....These types of posts should be archived and stored in their own section. That way there are not multiple theads regarding the same topics over and over.