new gears or sm465?

[Desert1957]

I think the answer to your question is determined by what you are doing with your truck. I have an SM465 with 4.10 gears in my 83 that tows my trailer and camper but its not a performance style manual transmission. Actually the wide gear ratio's kinda suck for normal driving.

If you want to have a "Performance" setup go with a regular 4 or 5 speed trans, The SM465 has such a low first I never use it unless I'm towing.

Desert

[68Timber]

I'm looking for an sm465 for mine and it has 3.08's. My way of thinking is the granny low will make a gear change unnecessary, especially with 4-low available. And 3.08's are good with a 1:1 final drive. 3.73's with a five-speed is much better but also far more expensive. That could run over 2 grand easy versus a few hundred for the 465.
Posted via Mobile Device

[Firebirdjones]

Originally Posted by Desert1957

I think the answer to your question is determined by what you are doing with your truck. I have an SM465 with 4.10 gears in my 83 that tows my trailer and camper but its not a performance style manual transmission. Actually the wide gear ratio's kinda suck for normal driving.

If you want to have a "Performance" setup go with a regular 4 or 5 speed trans, The SM465 has such a low first I never use it unless I'm towing.

Desert

This is exactly what I was thinking. I got the impression from the OP's first post that he was more into performance with this truck, breaking 12 bolts and all. So the first thing that popped in my head is that the SM465 is not the trans for this, definately not performance oriented. If he's breaking 12 bolts he'll make short work out of that SM465 as well, not to mention the gear spread is horrible.
It's more of a work horse transmission and is not something for banging gears and popping clutches. Great trans for a work truck.

My personal opinion, if you want to set this up right, and you want a manual trans, you are worried about gas mileage, and you also want a lower first gear, and you also like to horse around with this thing,,,,Then you really need to just step up for a TKO600. Very strong trans, 2.84 first gear and a .64 overdrive. With 3.73's it would be perfect in first gear and in overdrive. You get the best of both worlds. Because what you are trying to accomplish otherwise is more than likely going to lean more one way than the other and a compromise will have to be made, something is going to suffer.

TKO retro swaps are made for just about every chassis now and various vendors. Actually swapping one of these in a vehicle that is already a manual trans is relatively inexpensive vs a full blown swap over from an auto.