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Gear ratios?

hiridin said:
the way its reading its like u have 4.56 gears on yer 29" tires... from i can figure out. out of overdrive going 65mph yer at like 3400 rpm's u put it in overdrive and it should drop atleast 15%. which will put u at yer 2900 rpm's. so thats how it appears to me. jus seems kinda weird it would be like that :confused: lucky in a way if thats the case but strange no one let u know about it when u bought it...


Yeah, well whatever is in there it gives some sick torque. We had to move some abandoned vehicles off our lot today and I had to tow a totally smacked f250 with a loaded bed and locked tranny up into the snow covered mud parking lot next to ours.

With everyone jeering me, and telling me I was gonna kill my X, I locked both hubs, taped down the one that spins too easily to free, and dropped it into 4x and low. Even when the truck hit a small strip of dry pavement, it had no hope of standing still. I was amazed at what my X did, and Im totally in love with it now.

The icing on the cake? When we couldn't get the chain free (it got wedged down there somewhere on the 250) I took up the slack, goosed it, and ripped the bumper off the 250. The chain broke my rear left tail light cover, but what the hell. All that does is add character, right? :)

Amazing the balls these X's have!
 



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figured out a way to get u pretty close on figuring what gears u got. u jack up one wheel. put it in neutral... spin the tire around twice and count how many times the driveshaft goes around. right there u can get a good idea of what u got. hopefully it goes around about 4 1/2 times :thumbsup: and yes explorers are quite nice aren't they :)
 






hiridin said:
figured out a way to get u pretty close on figuring what gears u got. u jack up one wheel. put it in neutral... spin the tire around twice and count how many times the driveshaft goes around. right there u can get a good idea of what u got. hopefully it goes around about 4 1/2 times :thumbsup: and yes explorers are quite nice aren't they :)

So jack up one wheel only? (can you give me a quick tip on where a good jack point is?) Is it detrimental to jack an X up by the meatball? I learned not to do it with s-10's.. almost always damages the cover/seal.
 






TNR said:
So jack up one wheel only? (can you give me a quick tip on where a good jack point is?) Is it detrimental to jack an X up by the meatball? I learned not to do it with s-10's.. almost always damages the cover/seal.

ya i've heard thats not a good idea... even though thats how i always did mine :confused: never had any problems on any of the vehicles i've done it to. sooooo i dunno i'll leave that up to you. i don't think yer really supposed to do that but then again i never had any problems whatsoever doing it.
 






I think he’s got 4.10 in there. He’s revving almost identically to how I am with 4.56/32"s. 4.10 would have also been an easy swap from a ranger, you don’t have a 28 spline 8.8 under there do ya? Hehe it’s probably not that likely.

I've jacked up by the cast-iron meatball, but it’s not the smartest thing to do. I've done it for years no problem. But I'm leery now-a-days with so much $$ invested... I jack and put stands on the frame rails. You can put stands on the end of the axle tubes near the spring perch. The axle is designed to be load bearing at this point.

It’s going to be hard to tell the difference between four and a tenth of a turn and four and a half turns. If you do the one wheel in the air thing, try to put like a little line of chalk on the tire, and on a relative point on the concrete (or body panel) so you can make an accurate estimation.

And yes, these things have some BALLS. New Britian CT huh, yr not too far from where i grew up.
 






Creager said:
It’s going to be hard to tell the difference between four and a tenth of a turn and four and a half turns. If you do the one wheel in the air thing, try to put like a little line of chalk on the tire, and on a relative point on the concrete (or body panel) so you can make an accurate estimation.
I would also put the chalk on the driveshaft and somewhere else that stays stationary relative to the driveshaft. It will be easier to tell how many times it goes around that way. Another thought, you should have someone else turn the wheel while you look at the driveshaft.
 






Creager said:
I think he’s got 4.10 in there. He’s revving almost identically to how I am with 4.56/32"s. 4.10 would have also been an easy swap from a ranger, you don’t have a 28 spline 8.8 under there do ya? Hehe it’s probably not that likely.

I've jacked up by the cast-iron meatball, but it’s not the smartest thing to do. I've done it for years no problem. But I'm leery now-a-days with so much $$ invested... I jack and put stands on the frame rails. You can put stands on the end of the axle tubes near the spring perch. The axle is designed to be load bearing at this point.

It’s going to be hard to tell the difference between four and a tenth of a turn and four and a half turns. If you do the one wheel in the air thing, try to put like a little line of chalk on the tire, and on a relative point on the concrete (or body panel) so you can make an accurate estimation.

And yes, these things have some BALLS. New Britian CT huh, yr not too far from where i grew up.

Ok, thats a good idea, I'll get the jackstands from my buddy and give this a shot soon.. yeah, I was born here, moved to the shoreline, then moved back here (cheaper rent, but its reflected in the roads, much to the dismay of my spanked radius arm bushings :) )
 






Creager said:
I think he’s got 4.10 in there. QUOTE]

ya yer probably right. it would be much more likely and practical to have 4.10's in it. only reason i was saying that is cuz he was running about 300 rpms higher at 65mph than i am. he's at 2900 and i'm no more than 2600. thats what kinda threw me off right there. if his 29" tire is closer to 28" rather than 29" at 65mph out of overdrive he's running what i would be ( him with 4.10's and 28's and me with 5.13's and 35's) which is 3200 rpm's. what i don't get is why mine drops to 2600 and his only drops to 2900 in overdrive. how accurate are these rpm gauges?
 






he said he has a manual transmission.
 






alexefron said:
he said he has a manual transmission.

i also have a manual transmission. thats y i don't really understand y his is soo much higher than mine. and an auto would be higher rpms than a manual not lower
 






Has it been verified that your speedometer readings are correct?

Consider this: my '92 GT once had a bad tranny (when I bought it) so I bought another used M5OD and swapped it in. The first time I took it for a spin, I was thinking "holy hell, this sucks, I'm going 70 mph and my RPMs are like 200 lower than what they were just driving in 4th." Ironically, it felt like EVERYONE was driving slow as heck. Come to find out, for some reason, I had to change the little speedometer drive gear because oddly, the replacement tranny is somehow different (though it came from a '93 Explorer).

It didn't feel like I was going faster than 70, though I had it to the floor
 






Forget to add...4x2, 3.27 open
 






Gps

I've verified the speed with gps.
From 0 to about 35 its spot on (although the needle wobbles alot sometimes)
after 35 or there about, it starts to degrade. By the time Im doing 65 (GPS)
the speedo says 60. When I get to around 85 (GPS) the speedo says 75. It basically gets progressivley worse the faster I go.
 






I agree that when a speedometer is off, the difference is not linear
 






4x2 has speedo gear on the tranny right? Your replacement probably came from an explorer with a different rear ratio
 






The speedometer gear goes into the tranny. I used my existing gear (yellow) but like I said it was pretty far off. I'm using a brown one right now (might be maroon, I dunno) and its still a little off but not much. I'm going to mess with it more this spring
 






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