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markeb01 · 11-04-2010, 11:09 PM

My only experience with changing gears has been changing the pumpkin on a 9” Ford, and the Dana 44 in my truck. In the Dana, 3.70 is the carrier break. 3.70 and down (numerically) like 3.08, 3.23 uses the same carrier, and anything with a lower gear ratio (higher numerically) like 3.90 or 4.10 requires the 4 series carrier.

Setting rear end gears is one of the rare tasks I don’t do myself. From what I’ve read it requires a dial indicator, and a lot of patience (experience helps), but the few times I’ve changed gears I had so much money invested in parts I wasn’t willing to risk it with a bad setup.

One other note – a while back I had a link to a website that compared all the different brands of rear end gears. It listed them by brand, ranked them by quality and if they made the gears or simply repackaged them. My hard drive crashed and I lost all that, but I remember their comments about Richmond gears – claiming they were harder to set up than other brands, ran hotter and were noisier in use than other brands. This stuck in my head because I just bought a Richmond 4 speed and was shopping for rear end gears. Not sure if any of that matters in a hot rod, and it certainly doesn’t if they’re the only brand that offers the ratio you want.

11-04-2010, 11:09 PM	#14
markeb01 Senior Enthusiast Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Spokane Valley, WA Posts: 8,356	Re: 3.73 gear swap for ???? My only experience with changing gears has been changing the pumpkin on a 9” Ford, and the Dana 44 in my truck. In the Dana, 3.70 is the carrier break. 3.70 and down (numerically) like 3.08, 3.23 uses the same carrier, and anything with a lower gear ratio (higher numerically) like 3.90 or 4.10 requires the 4 series carrier. Setting rear end gears is one of the rare tasks I don’t do myself. From what I’ve read it requires a dial indicator, and a lot of patience (experience helps), but the few times I’ve changed gears I had so much money invested in parts I wasn’t willing to risk it with a bad setup. One other note – a while back I had a link to a website that compared all the different brands of rear end gears. It listed them by brand, ranked them by quality and if they made the gears or simply repackaged them. My hard drive crashed and I lost all that, but I remember their comments about Richmond gears – claiming they were harder to set up than other brands, ran hotter and were noisier in use than other brands. This stuck in my head because I just bought a Richmond 4 speed and was shopping for rear end gears. Not sure if any of that matters in a hot rod, and it certainly doesn’t if they’re the only brand that offers the ratio you want.