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What to do? Gear swap or wheel/tire swap with a lift?
Truck is a 94 f150 2wd. Previous owner, by my exhaustive online calculations, put 4:56 gears in this truck (I could be off a tad, but 3000rpm @70mph with a 5 speed and stock 235/75R15 wheels behind a 4.9l is ridiculous).
The truck needs new tires anyways, blew a front left steer tire doing 80mph headed to Dallas last week, truck sits more than it gets driven (truck driver here), tires are at least 2 1/2 years old, showing signs of dry rot.
I want to get it off the ground some for my personal taste, and so I can put a taller tire on it to help alleviate the insanely low gearing, and knock the rpms down a bit on the highway. A 31" tall wheel/tire combo would be a good start at this.
Would 31's look ridiculous on a stock height excab short bed? I plan on upping to 17"-18" wheels so I dont have a ton of sidewall like a superswamper, would that help aesthetically?
A 31" tire will only bring you down by 7%, so if you're turning 3000 rpm now it will only get you down to 2800 rpm. Hardly even a start much less a good one. If you were aiming for 2500 rpm you'd need to go to 35" tires, pretty big for a 2WD.
Alternatively you could change to 3.55 gears and come down to about 2300 rpm.
Why are you wanting to bring RPM down? Not saying you shouldn't, but the reason will help decide what the best solution is. If you're going for fuel mileage big tires are a bad idea. You'll lose more mileage to the aerodynamic losses than you'll gain.
To your other question, I don't think 31s would look ridiculous unless you put them on 17" - 18" wheels. Here's a pic of my lifted 4WD F-150 SuperCab short bed with 33s on 15" tires. Yeah, it's a lot different from your truck, but the sidewalls don't look too tall, at least to my eye.
With 31s, my 302 5 speed truck pulls down mid/upper teens. So I'd see a 300 about the same. If you are trying to get the revs down significantly, I'd search out a junkyard to get a complete axle from to swap in. And aim for a 3.55 gear if you are going to be running 80 mph much.
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