can gears show an increase or decrease in power? obviously make the car work differently but could it really show such things on a dyno for example?

 

It won't sow anything on a dyno, but it will change the car's acceleration and highway characteristics. Shorter gears (higher numericaly) will allow you to get up to speed quicker, but limit your top speed, but your HP output will be the same. Only the actual speed the car is moving will change. You will notice it on a 1/4 mile strip.

2.73 for all highway driving, keep those RPM's down
3.42 for a quicker street car
3.73 for a street/strip car
3.90 for a track car

You can go to 4.11 or higher, but I wouldn;'t reccomend it without really tall tires.

BTW - all those recomendations are just my opinion, I am sure many people have different feelings about the gear setups.

 

all makes sense and pretty much how i feel about it....

 

are you sure you won't see an increase on a dyno.

there is more mechanical advantage with 4.11's than 2.73's there is a reason they have you run a chassis dyno in your 1:1 gear. wouldn't steep rear gears help out a little also?

 

Higher gear typically dyno lower. Usually 5 to 10 hp. The parasitic power loss is slightly higher because there are more teeth on the gear. This in turn also makes the gear slightly weaker. Like Dewey said there is an increase in mechanical advantage but that is the torque that is applied to the axels and not meassured through the dyno. The dyno will measure how fast you accelerate and produce a power number based on that. In essence you are gaining more low end pulling power. A tractor will dyno very low, but it has no problem pulling a 30,000lb trailer. It is using the mecahical advantage of it geartrain. Think of it that way.

 

the acceleration rate of the drum on the dyno will go up. there will be a visiable increase in both TQ and HP as read byt the dyno. if you want to read how dynos works check out mustang dynos website.