Quote:
Originally Posted by HotLavaMan
I like the idea of a sixth gear that drops RPMs down to AT level and for the type of money we're talking about here (perhaps ~$1200 installed) then maybe waiting for a third party to come out with a different sixth gear is an option. Sure, install of a different sixth gear should be more expensive but the actual gear itself should be relatively reasonable (although that is a wild ass guess).
|
The actual gears are what I'm afraid of! Diffs come in different ratios that are compatible, and typically have quite a few ratios to choose from, but transmissions are much more vehicle specific and this 6th gear is the longest 6th gear you can find out of all similar transmissions. So getting a better highway cruising gear would require it to be custom made, and I think the costs for that would be frighteningly high. Even if you get some company to make a few hundred sets, they can't get the cost as low as a differential which is already in mass production.
On ecomodder.com someone swapped their last gear and apparently it wasn't too bad to install, but it might be different on this transmission. That person's gear was I think made by taking 2nd gear from another transmission and flipping the cogs around to get a really low ratio, and since they had to TIG weld something on the gears I think the parts were weakened and so they failed after about 15k miles.