I always see people talking about this when upgrading to better performance engines or just 302s. What do these gears determine when the car is being driven?
Gears are torque multipliers, lower(numerically higher)gears give you more low end grunt while higher(lower numerically)gears put the torque up a little higher, or longer after you take off. Lower gears are usually used behind smaller engines)to help get things going) while bigger engines do ok with higher gears-because bigger engines usually have more torque. Swapping gears in the case of the Mavericks is 99.9% performance related. Going to a 3.55 or 3.80 gear over the stock 2.79/3.00 gear is the best seat of the pants improvement you can make IMO. Only drawback is these gears will raise your cruising rpms up 400-600. Not a big deal if you're a city dweller with occational highway spurts, but kind of a pain if you live where a lot of 65-75 mph driving is required/allowed. An overdrive(AOD or T5)fixes the rpm problem, some fabricating is required to run either in a Mav.
