This is so bizzare but coming from Mike it is no surprize. He projects
himself as the macho 4 wheeler Jeep expert,runs bigger tires with tall
gears and says solution is to forget 5th gear and then Bill agrees
that is less strain that way without even thinking about the extra
strain that big tires with stock gears add to complete drive train in
EVERY gear. You guys gave me a good morning chuckle! Also this logic
of yours reduces power or wheel torque that you can get to the ground
which shows you are 4 wheelers in ego not in practice. Getting back to
orginal post, Chevy gears will not fit a Jeep and even so a 3.73 will
not solve problem in OD with 35's nor would 4.10 most likley. A 4.56
would though. There is a mind set with some that a 3.73 or 4.10 is a
great overall gear but the proper gear ratio depends on the tire size,
vehicle and engine no one gear does all though some think they do. A
3.31 is a very poor gear choice for any off roading with stock or
especailly larger than stock tires. Anyone that really knows their
stuff would know this and fix it with proper gearing unless their ego
is bigger than their understanding of all it how works. Proper gearing
would give you more performance in all gears, require less usage of
low range, reduce driveline strain and likely improve MPG too because
engine will lug less but there are those that think the lower the RPM
the better the MPG and lower the overall strain. If you vehicle
requires 60 HP to cruise, it has to have 60 HP regardless of RPM which
means with tall gears it has to work even harder at a lower rpm to
cruise when you install bigger tires plus bigger tires add more drag
for rolling resistance and extra drag from taller vehicle which means
that you reall need to do more than just match effective gear ratio
(old ratio and tires vs new ratio and tires) if you want it to perform
well.  You might look at the following charts. This first one shows
the effect of axle ratio on wheel traction

http://forum.snoman.com/viewtopic.php?t=63

This next one show the loss of effective pulling power or wheel torque
at contact surface as tire size increase without a gear ratio change

http://forum.snoman.com/viewtopic.php?t=53

This last one is a tire size and axle ratio calculator that lets you
compute you engine RPM in drive or any gear that you know the ratio
for.

http://www.snoman.com/HTML/axlecalc_5a.html

There are two basic groups of 4 wheelers, one group that thinks they
know what they are doing (Mikes Group) and give up gears on trannies
and run low range a lot and reduce over all performance and traction
of road because they think axle ratio gearing does not matter. And
when tranny or clutch fails  or drishaft breaks or Tcase goes south
they blame it on poor design not improper application by them.  Then
there is the other group (not one Mike suscribes too) that fully
understands the big picture how important proper gearing is and takes
the time and expense to regear vehicles properly (rather than hoping
for air intakes and exhaust modes to "fix" problem) and then they do
not have tranny, drive shaft or Tcase failures or power loss and they
also get to use all of the gears too as well as have a vehicle that
preforms better too on and off road.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 19:35:16 -0700, "L.W. \(Bill\) Hughes III"
<billhughes@cox.net> wrote:

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