sneaky98gt
10 Year Member
Built plenty of modular motors (most 4V) with centri's for street driven cars. I wasn't their biggest fan at first, but with a 4.10 gear you really will not notice any "lack" of power down low. Hits hard around 3000 and, frankly, helps keep the tires planted.
Only true problem with that is that you'll need to run a 28" tire to get down the 1/4 at a 500-600 rwhp level. But that's not too big of an issue.
Plenty of folks (myself especially included) have debated in numerous threads about gears with blowers, and it's still my opinion that for a mostly street/occasional track car, anything over 3.73s is overkill. A bolt-on 2-valve car with a 5-speed has a hard time with traction in 1st with the stock gears. A supercharged car making 600 to the tires with 4.10s? I'm sure you're not going to notice any lack of power; it's gonna roast them through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. My car is a 400 rwhp, a 2.84 1st gear (auto), and 3.73s; I was driving last night in some cool dry air (55-60) for the first time in months, and it was chattering the tires in 2nd gear. 1st was a joke on any occasion, even rolling into it easy. Why someone would run more gear, on a 5-speed car with more 1st gear, and way more power eludes me. And as I've mentioned in other threads, spinning tires is lots of fun until you get smoked at a stoplight by a minivan (almost had this happen to me one time...almost )
Kenne Bell spouts that steeper gears simply aren't needed with a PD blower, and while they way over-exaggerate things, there is some truth to it. The new 2013 GT500 for example, it makes 400 ft-lbs of torque....at 1000 rpm, 500 ft-lbs at 2000 rpm, and 600 ft-lbs at 3000 rpm. That's crazy, right? That is where the fun of a PD blower is, especially the TVS blowers (a twin screw won't make that kind of torque that low in the rpm). The GT500 has 3.31 gears; you're talking about 4.10s. That's a roughly 25% increase in gear. So to make a different car with 4.10s pull the same, it needs 320 ft-lbs of torque at 1000 rpm, 400 ft-lbs at 2000 rpm, and 480 ft-lbs at 3000 rpm to make it pull the same amount (and that's ignoring the fact that the pull will be shorter due to the shorter gears). Not saying it isn't possible, but I've never seen a 600 horsepower centri car come anywhere near those numbers; I doubt 800 horsepower centri cars make those numbers.
I know what you're going to say: oh, but the low RPM torque doesn't matter that much in a race. And yes, that is 100% correct. Without really good tires and suspension, both cars will blow the tires off through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. BUT, the real fun in that much torque, the real reason why so many people like it, is in 4th, 5th, and 6th gears. When you're in overdrive on a back country road, come up on a slower car, and can easily pull around them while still in overdrive, that's fun. When you do an on-ramp pull in 4th or 5th gear from just over idle, and you're still going in 'getting-arrested' speed territory when you make it to the highway, that's fun. When you can pull through the gears never getting about 2000 rpm, and still be running 100 mph in a matter of a few seconds, that's fun.
Well now, this post turned out about 3 paragraphs longer than planned. I'm not trying to argue, or say anyone is wrong, or anything else. Just my opinion.