So my front axle was shot, needed wheel bearings, ball joints. So while i had it apart I decided to go to 4.30s. I got a used set for the front for $75 and new gears for the rear for $200. I got the front done yesterday,hopefully I will be able to get to the rear tomorrow. We are heading to jackson hole wyoming in 2 weeks. Cant wait to see how it pulls the travel trailer.

 

You will love it for pulling, 4.30 is a nice match for the V-10. I went to 4.88's so with my future new 35" tires I will net an effective ratio of 4.39. Currently running 32"s with the 4.88's and it is a locomotive with our 9k ToyHauler in tow!

 

Coming up out of there is up one of the steepest highway climbs i've been on.
I guess you'll see how they work!

 

Im running 35s now. It did ok with the 3.73s im really anxious to see how it does with the 4.30s. We go up through star valley and that last pull before you drop into the valley I would be in first gear on the floor and be doing about 35-40mph.

 

Quick question,

My truck has 3.73 and is pretty much a dedicated TV.

Since it is a dedicated TV I have seriously considered upping to 4.30 or 4.56 axle ratio's.

Its a 2wd.

Right now I can pull OD if I stay above 60, will I see a noticeable difference in power? How about MPG.. I am at about 7.5 pulling my 7700lb Travel Trailer at 60-65 mph.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

 

My EX sees more than half of it's use as a tow rig, our trailer is a 9500lb ToyHauler and we pull 5k+ miles a year on average. I use an Ultra-Guage to monitor several parameters including instant and average MPG and I log and hand calculate every drop of gas that goes into the truck.
Over the past three years we have pulled South from Philly to coastal SC, NC and GA in that order, all of these trips were with the same load and over the same route (I-95). I tow at 60-65 MPH, don't use cruise control and will give up a little speed on hills if it means I can stay in OD longer to maximize MPGs. The first two years we averaged 7.25 MPG for the towing portion of those trips, dropping out of OD on the rolling hills in MD and VA really hits the MPGs. This past year I made two changes to the EX, I swapped out axle housings replacing my factory 3.73's for a set of 4.88's and installed a set of Banks headers, left the rest of the exhaust stock. This year's trip to GA along the same route averaged 9.0 MPG pulling the same load and running the same speeds. The EX did not drop out of OD a single time over the entire trip! And I feel the performance has been greatly improved under all conditions. I can't say how much of this improvement is due to the gears vs the headers but this combo has this rig feeling and acting like a new truck! We did pull 3k+ miles with just the 4.88 last summer but that trip was a lot of mountains through VA, TN, KY and WV so the MPGs were not as good, but I don't have anything to compare them to as we had never pulled that many hills on our other trips. No doubt about it though, the truck liked the gear change a lot, power to the ground was much better and it did hold onto OD better on the smaller climbs. Last month I finally purchased some custom tunes from Mike at 5 Star, I can't wait to see how much better this can get!
Our rig.

 

I have 4.30's on my 2wd X. I tow a high profile 33' Travel Trailer with a gross weight of 9,000 pounds. Last trip to Florida down I-65 I locked out the OD, ran 58-60 mph, at around 2800 to 3000 RPM. I used cruise control. What a relaxing tow. MPG was 7.8.

I was thinking of bumping up the speed to 65 if I get in a time crunch. Do you think 3300 to 3500 rpm would hurt it?

 

So with 4:88's at 65 with the 32" tire what is the RPM's. I so wish I had my truck had 4:56 or 88's. I currently have 4:10's and mikes 93 tune. The truck does fine with no real complaints but a lower gear would make it a monster. I tow at 22,450 fyi.
I also wish someone would offer a way to manually lock the trans in a gear like the newer trucks do, that would be awesome too.

 

Sorry Boss, I am at work now without my notebook, I hardly ever go online at home . I'll try to remember to bring it along with me tomorrow, I am pretty sure I made a note of my speed / RPM. We run around 18k lbs. The little bit of solo running I do in the EX is a blast with the new gears, it comes off the line like a dragster! Hard to drive it easy.

 

So I worked on installing the new gears on the rear today. Everthing went pretty smooth until i installed the carrier. The new pinion was coming in contact with the carrier. It actually cut groves into the carrier when I tryed to rotate it. There was a shim below the inner pinion bearing so I pressed off the bearing,removed the shim and reinstalled the pinion and carrier and the pinion is still contacting the carrier. There are no shims behind the inner bearing race so I cant move the pinion away from the carrier any further. Im thinking I have the wrong gear set but the sticker on the box says 1999-2010 10.5. My carrier says 10.25 on it though. It also had 2 large spacers on each side of the carrier between the housing and carrier bearings. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

Found my notebook, at 67MPH in OD and locked up it was turning 2500 RPMs, not uncomfortable at all. Mike from 5 Star might be able to fiddle with your tunes to get the trans to behave more inline with what you are looking for.

 

So it turns out i had a wrong bearing in my install kit. It was for a 10.25 which is actually a bigger bearing. Got everything put back together yesterday just driving it easy breaking in the gears. There are a few hills on my way to work and it used to drop out of OD and now it stayed in and I was able to maintain speed with out giving it any more gas. So far Im happy.

 

Good to hear you got them in. Those were my thoughts afterwards.
Still happy too

 

Thanks for the info. I am thinking about having Mike lock out 5th gear until 70 MPH.