Did you regear? I have the same observations of the cam change....seat of the pants thrill and traction problems. Sticky tires may help. Cam changes arent worth the money unless you get tires that can get it to the ground. Getting my point? LOL

Maybe the real point is this: too many people try gearing after all the other mods that made high rpm driving tractionless anyway. Perhaps if you geared first for your target trap speed (or just 4.10's for the street) then you wouldnt buy the heads and cam if you dont have traction. Or, not you specifically, learn to drive part throttle to control wheelspin, or best yet realize that slower spinning tires re-hook faster than a faster spinning tires (3.42's).

 

Actually what you experienced was that the tires with the 4.10's were spinning slower than they do in the same gear with 3.42's. You will never hook if you do a burnout with 2nd gear as the start since the car never catches up to the speed of the tire rotation.

I run 6.13 gears on my dart that dead hooks in a wheelie yet with the same engine power level, it wouldnt hook even when at 5.XX's. I needed to slow the tire spin down that much to let the car's acceleration catch up to the rate of tire spin.

 

Yes, I tried a set of 4.10's in my Camaro SS, pulled them out & replaced them with 3.73's, which I liked much better.

The 4:10's were just too squirrelly on the street for my taste, at least with street tires. On the freeway it always felt like the RPMs were too high. With the 3.73's, RPMs were about 10% higher than stock.

The 3.73's were perfect for my taste. I could still break the tires loose from a roll in second gear. That was plenty enough gear for me. FWIW, the car had around 383 HP & TQ, 218/224 cam.

 

Don't fear the gear!!!!!!

 

Gears are a great upgrade, and is one of the things i do first.
DoC

 

I just got done with the DTE Stage IV 4.10 gears and love em. The car already had H/C LG Pros, Injectors, intake and a few others. The 4.10's seemed to make almost as much difference as the engine mods did. I only lost about 2-3 MPG over the 3.42. That is actually measuring the amount of fuel used/ miles driven. The DIC readout is not correct anymore and reads 2-3 MPG off. On a 100 mile trip at about 75 MPH it returned 22 MPG.

 

What are the implications for those of us with A6 transmissions?

What would be the logical gear to switch to? Has anybody done this yet?

 

I think that depends on your logic, and your goals. If you are trying to optimize for quarter mile pulls, you would want to go w/ a much shorter gear. As I understand it, w/ a stock A6 setup, you will cross the finish line in 3rd gear. Assuming that your goal is to cross the finish line near redline in 4th gear, you could start be looking at the percentage difference between 3rd gear and 4th gear, then adjust the rear end ratio accordingly.

According to other threads I have read, following are the gear ratios for the fist four gears of the A6: 4.02, 2.36, 1.53, and 1.15.

So, simple math tells us that 1.53 divided by 1.15 equals 1.33.
1.33 times the 2.56 rear end ratio equals 3.41. So, if you put in a standard 3.42 gear ratio, you should cross the finish line in 4th gear at about the same RPMs that you now cross in 3rd gear.

Another "logic" approach says that if a 4.10 gear works well for launching an M6, try to get a similar final drive ratio for an A6.

So, the first gear ratios for an M6 are either 2.66:1 or 2.97:1.

Again, simple math says that 2.66 times 4.10 equals 10.90, and 2.97 times 4.10 equals 12.18. So you'd want to shoot for a final gear ratio somewhere between those two numbers.

The equivalent math for the A6 says that its first gear ratio of 4.02 times a 3.42 rear end gear ratio equals 13.75. So the final first gear ratio for such a combo would be much shorter than a 4.10 gear with any M6. The closest you could come with a standard gear would be a 2.73 ratio, which when multiplied by the 4.02 first gear equals a final drive ratio of 10.97.

So, as you can see, there are some tradeoffs.

It's all academic at this point, because my understanding is that there are no aftermarket rear end gears for an A6.