Is this normal? Long first gear

[Charlie]

Well, as some of you may know, I've been debating what to do with my explorer since the transmission is failing. I've decided to keep it, and deal with the transmission failure when it happens, but this won't be a daily driver for too much longer It's going to become my toy-I'm sure you know what I mean.

Anyway, what I'm wondering--the transmission. I've got the 4R55E transmission, and I'm wondering about the first gear. It's been like this as long as I can remember. In 1st gear, with stock sized tires, it wouldn't shift until 45-50ish mph when I was going all out. Out of curiosity, since that seems really fast for 1st gear, I decided one time a while back to put it in 1st, and run it all the way to the limiter to see how fast it would go.

When I did that test, I hit the limiter at 55mph. Why such a long 1st gear? Is it supposed to be like this, or has something been wrong with it for a long time?

I wonder if something has been f-ed up for a long time, because I don't understand why you would make a 1st gear so long. Talk about wasting gas and strain on the engine to get moving.

So, is it normal?

BTW-gearing is 3.27 open.

 

[Rick]

3.27 is a very high ratio. It takes much longer for the engine to reach max rpm with the high gear than with lower gears.