As a general rule of thumb, a tenth in the quarter mile is a car length. (obviously not an exact science, but close) So you can figure that 4.10's usually drop approximately 3 tenths of a second off quarter mile times, so the geared car would be approximately 3 car lengths ahead of the stock geared car at the end of a quarter mile.

Thats a nice bang for the buck at the $1,395 that we charge for gear swaps.


To compare the FI debate, the average ECS SC car will drop 1.7-1.8 seconds off their ET with a stock car. We have had some go much lower but lets go off of averages for this discussion. With an install price of $7995.

If you compare ET drop per price they are about equal, or close enough, so it all depends on your budget and what your future goals and driving needs are. The 4.10's will not work well if you wish to up your power goals later or do HPDE events, but are a great jump for a stock or H/C car. The SC can go to much higher HP levels if you wish later, wouldn't be recomended for HPDE events either, but the power and stock feel of the car is hard to beat.

See what works for you and your budget, along with your future goals. It's best to take a drive in both, and make your decision from there.

Hope this helps.

 

Why is this an either/or choice? Are you not able to use some of the budget difference to put together a package to go with the gears? Even if you were looking for mods that would pass emissions inspection and testing, you can do a combination of things with gears.

If the choice was between a free set of gears or a free maggie, I'd take the maggie hands down. Since I don't have maggie money, some gears will be in my future.

 

Robbi it boils down to what you want. Your asking for the opinions from the members of corvetteforum.com. Your only going to get what they prefer which is only going to confuse you more.

Here's some simple questions I'll ask you. When I see your reply I'll PM you a non bias opinion.

What is your goal?
What is your budget?
Do you want a performance adder that has no growth?
Do you want a performance adder with growth?

This is a very straight forward topic that's been rehashed countless times. Use the sites search features to educate yourself before you make a decision.

My position here on the boards is just not to moderate. I'm here as well to help people like yourself when you have reached a crossroad so you can make an educated decision.

 

Thanks for the impartial post. Seriously. Chuck does great things with corvettes, mostly gears, but also FI and tuning stuff, and you do great things with vettes, mostly FI, but also gears, and tuning stuff. Right?

A group hug is badly needed.

I keep saying that my first powah mod is going to be 4.10s on my Z51, but I would LOVE to supercharge it later, and I think the combo may be too much. I love to shift, but not that much.

Since I HAVE to mod this car, and NOW, and I don't have the money to go FI, I'm going to go with gears, for now - and then when I have the extra cash around, and am not so concerned with maintenance/warranty - I guess if I have the gears, I might be leery of getting a SC. I'll probably go H/C. And not a puzzy cam, an aggressive one that makes the car idle like crap, and sound like a dragster.

Obviously getting "blown" provides more HP - and the gears just make you faster in real life, not on the dyno (I believe gears even make a dyno read lower, right?)

I dunno - I'm just glad the animosity has been toned down. You guys are both really respected on here, and it (almost) makes me wish I lived up in the NE so I could visit you both.

I'm stuck with Corvette weather year round and these sucky FL tuners...

Joking! There are good guys down here, too. At least from what I've read here on the forum...

But the original question is a valid one.

It all comes down to what you want in the end, I guess...

Peace,

Mike

 

ECS is known for FI setups, but by far it is not their only business. I started using ECS 4 years ago and at the time wasn't sure what to do. I started with gears and ran the 1/4 mile. I picked ECS over other performance shops because they had proven cars in the 1/4 mile, sponsored the ECS Corvette Challenge, had many good reports on CF and frankly because they sold everything so I would have plenty of choices when I decided what to do.

I then decided that I wanted to do road racing so they added H/C setup. Along the years I became Sales and Support for ECS and started to get more and more people into the road racing.

Since many of the people I deal with are into Road Race I really never sell FI and basically stick to NA applications.

 

H/C set ups are great, but like everything, not for everyone. Ask around, there are people right in this thread that have 4.10's and an SC and are very happy with it. Now if the car went forged later we would most likely be returning the car back to 3.42's like we have done many many times before in the C5 world, but it's very easy to find someone to swap you their 3.42 for your 4.10 so I would not worry about that too much.

The only thing I would like to clarify is that we are really a full service shop, yes we are very versatile with high HP cars both FI and NA with record holding cars in both venue's, but our main customer base is the normal gear swaps, header installs, stock vehicle tunes, mail order tunes and so on. You just normally hear about the more elaborate jobs because it makes for better reading I guess.

 

Robbi:

I'll solve your problem, sell your car, buy mine, you won't have to worry about any mods.