The only mods I plan on doing to the car ('85 Camaro) in the future is -maybe- (and I do mean -maybe-) exhaust, K&N airfilter, take off A/C belt, new ignition setup, and cold air induction. What would be good rear end gears for this setup, where can I find them in the junkyard and how much will they cost? From what I hear 3.73's are too high for street and 2.73's are too low, what about 3.11's or 3.45's? Or anything else? Looking for an easy swap. I'm looking for acceleration but not kill myself with gas milage. Tough combo but any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

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1985 Camaro SC - 2.8L, auto. Stock.

 

If your car is still all stock, won't it already have 3.42 gears?

 

You should have 3.42's already......as prev post.

I found that stepping up to 4.10's isn't too bad of a tradeoff in either gas milage or performance. The effect on gas will be alot more than fuel in the negative way. I ran my 2.8 with 4.10's and it only felt marginally faster... I hate to do this but here's the results...

3.42 STOCK 2.8 - 1/4 mile 17.4 sec
4.10 SAME CAR - 1/4 mile 16.8 sec

So is it really worth it? Do you ever drive on a highway?

I swapped out the 4.10s to the other car with much more improvement in power (and a bigger loss in fuel since I just know better than to go on the highway since RPM's on a v8 seem more severe)

 

Oh yeah, I already have 3.42's... heh, shoulda checked before posting... sorry. And yes, I do drive on the highway.

 

a stock 2.8 liter will turn 17.4 in the quarter? i didn't know they were that fast

 

Thats what I ran. I did some mods like exhaust/k&n/cut the air box and stuff like that but the car was basically stock. I was a cool day and the motor wasn't completly warm...

I must admit to the fact that it runs much slower when it fully warms up, so much you can feel the loss. 195 thermo isn't a good perf but I don't use the car for stuff like that... Basically it was a high 17 with 4.10 gears. They were the fastest times.

Every rice cooker pics on my damn car so I only use it to goto work... Even other chevys (montes, ect) line up with it (paintjob and loud v6 exhaust sound brings them like flys to sh:t for the easy kill)

Funny because every time I drive the 'bird on a 2 lane street the mustangs stay behind me (99% of the time.. and the other 1% they end up behind me)

 

I have 3.73's on my 2.8. I run large tires, which turns that into an "effective" 3.46 gear. My rpm's at 65mph are 2000. Visit this page: http://www.tolan-hoechst.com/cars/tirecalc.htm For your "tires", put in the same tire for current & previous. Roll down to the effective gearing spot. Put in a roadspeed (65 mph), and a rear gear (3.73) at your trans gear (0.7 for automatic's overdrive, 1.0 for auto's 3rd gear). Then you can see your engine rpm's at a certain speed.

The only rears available in a junkyard will be from early model f-bodies; 83-85. '83 will use non-metric brake lines, so avoid those if you can (or swap over your whole metric brake system onto the '83 axle). Two cars got the 3.73 axle in '84: One was the Z28 or Trans Am, which, with a manual trans, got a 3.73/posi/disc rear. You'll have a lot of brake work to do if you find that! The other is the '84 Camaro H.O. (says so on the back left bumper), which got a 3.73/open/drum rear.


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-Tom P (Hot rodded 1986 Firebird 2.8l) from http://www.f-body.net/mailbag/3rd/3rd_mailbag.html message boards
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