This is the same delima I faced as well - the only major problem is that if you change to numerically lower gears with that much power, your torque converter will NOT like you and will likely burn up a high gear after a dozen or so passes.
I don't or won't drive mine enough to necessitate another set of street wheels, I'm too lazy to change 2 wheels, much less ALL of them.
FWIW, I am relatively sure there's no difference between FMS gears and 'stock' gears... after all, FMS is Ford.
brooks always killing my grand ideas! it would be nice to buy some rpm's, but i don't want to burn up the trans in the process. only problem with jumping from 3.73's to something like 3.55 or 3.27 is that i don't know if the difference is great enough for the effort.
brooks always killing my grand ideas! it would be nice to buy some rpm's, but i don't want to burn up the trans in the process. only problem with jumping from 3.73's to something like 3.55 or 3.27 is that i don't know if the difference is great enough for the effort.
I'll explain it like this -
In your mind the difference may not be that much, but for the car it's a BIG change.
We took Tony's car to Ennis (aka fast408) and with the 3.55's it went through the lights at 7500. Trans burned up after 5 or 6 passes. Took it to Mike, he fixed it. Put it back with 3.27's in it - burned up the trans again in 3 or 4 passes, banging on the limiter at 1000' or so. Burned it up again. (in the datalog you could see it drop 800 on the shift).
It was finally apparent what was happening - the converter was slipping at the top end because of the gears / weight of the car / power.
We got the trans fixed again, flushed the converter etc.. and put 3.73's in it. The car picked up almost .2 in the quarter, 5 MPH, went through the lights at 6900 and had 150+ passes on that trans. No other changes.
This is likely an extreme case, hard to say - but with only fluid coupling the converter to the rest of the drivetrain, you have to keep that in mind.
For sure. I just worry that the car won't have the gear to make a 1/4 mile pass as it sits. Not that I really plan to run a 1/4, but I think ~130mph is all it's good for as it sits.
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