In my humble opinion shorter gears would be a waste of time unless you were going to do some other modifications as well. The final drive is already very low at 4.06. The 4 cylinder cars are actually slightly taller, I think about 3.9.
Shorter gears are best used with engines that have greatly improved breathing including much, much, much wilder cams as well as bottom end (rods and crank, etc.)improvements that would permit raising the rev limit to well above 8,000 RPM. When cam changes and breathing raise the power band into a much higher RPM area, shorter gears help you to get into that power band quickly.
Using shorter gears without matching the rest of the powertrain can make the car actually perform worse and make it much more unpleasant to drive.
Trust me, I've been there. I once had a small block Chevy that I experimented with engine improvements and gear changes. I tried 3.00 all the way down to 5.18. I ended up with 3.70 as the best all around street usable combination with a moderate cam.
Since there is little or no availability of hotter cams and the need to move to stronger rods, I just don't see shorter gears as accomplishing anything on our Contiques. They run great the way they are with little or no modification.
Also, it was an easy thing back then to change gears. You would just find the correct ratio in a wrecking yard or swap meet complete with the entire third member differential and it could be swapped in about a half hour. Much bigger job requiring more expertise on our cars.
Jim Johnson
98 SVT
Originally posted by bret:
anyone know pros/cons on doing this to the svt? and what is available? if anything...
