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Hey guys right now I have a newley rebuilt 454 with a 700r4 tranny but my gears are only the original 3:08's....I want to change the gears so what is the lowest I can go to and still enjoy the parkway ride........Thanx...
With a 700R4 and a 454, you can probably go with 3.73's becouse of the overdrive and still have good gearing for accleration around town. I run 3.55's with my 4spd and anything more then that would greatly reduce my highway useage. I'd say 3.55's if your spending the majority of time on the highway and don't plan on racing much or 3.73's if you tend to do any sort of competition use and still want to be highway friendly.
The overdrive would easily allow for 4.10:1 ratio for cruising the open highway but as Little Mouse stated, you would likely be more satisfied with something in the 3.08:1 to 3.55:1 with the big block.
Unless you have run out of Corvette related things to spend money on I would stay with the 3.08:1 gears for a while.
Play with some of the online rpm vs. speed gear ratio calculators.
I've always liked the ones at smokemup.com
I don't know much about autos but a 3.27 low gear anything is a
stump puller to me I have a 12.76 low gear in my truck and
4.33 rear gears I can recomend if you need some more grunt down low,
you don't mind a top speed of 7 mph in first gear do you.
one of my mack trucks had an 18.1 low gear and a 36.1 reverse
gear. you could put the truck in reverse gear run the truck up to 2300
rpm ( maximum ) open the door look at the ground and you would be barely moving. The mack truck did have five reverse gears to
choose from so you could go faster in reverse then a turtle if you wanted to.
Last edited by Little Mouse; Jun 11, 2006 at 09:44 PM.
I have TPI and a 700R4 and 3.7 gears out back. To me it is way too much gear. First gear is useless. I have 3.36s and will put them in, maybe this winter. It does depend on what you want the car to do. If you just want to cruise, then 3.08 or 3.36. If you want performance, then 3.7 or 4.1.