Re: 1980 El Camino Fresh New Paint!!! TELL ME WHAT U THINK??
kuruption109 said:
I doubt its the rear gears bro, even if you did have lower gears your big rims would offset them somewhat and you should still be able to cruise at hwy speeds. I'm thinking you might have to adjust your kickdown cable or you might have a vacuum leak somewhere
i agree
the vacuum modulator (not connected or improperly adjusted) will cause a very late shift, etc. then when it does finally shift it will feel like you have a stage three shift kit...lol... thats why i wanted him to take a pic of the modulator to see if the line is even there, pass side of trans, here is the thing, any trans shop, which he took it to several would have looked at that, or should have check that... its also easy to hook up a gauge and check the modulator, they are cheap to replace...
Saint, you can estimate the gear ratio pretty easily (which i dont think it is, you would have to have some pretty aggressive gears to run outta gear, with the 3 speed)
when i go to junk yards and look for rear ends, posi... it can be a task to take off the cover and try to count the pinion and ring gear to get the actual ratio... especially when its hot as hell out...
what u can do is this...
put the rear on stands, put car in neutral, block front and rear of front tires...lol
mark your tire, so that you can easily see and count its rotation... you can use masking tape for this... mark the yoke the same way... so that you can count full turns... have you wife rotate the tire one time. tell her to tell you when it has made a complete rotation... while she is rotating it, you need to count how many times the driveshaft/yoke etc, spins...
for example, if i jack my rear end up, put it on jack stands... mark my tire and yoke/or driveshaft... with my 3.73 gears... my tire will rotate once, as someone slowly rotates the tire for me, before they make a complete rotation of the tire, my yoke would have spun 3 full turns and stopped just shy of a 4th one... you can only get certain gear ratios, so i would then estimate that my yoke spun 3 times and then another 3/4 (or .75) of a turn, by the time, my tire rotated once, knowing that the closest ratio is 3.73, i can estimate fairly accurately...
if the tire spins once and at the same time, the yoke rotates about 2 1/2 times, then you are closer to 2.42. make sense?
for your rear end to wind out at about 45 miles per hour, thats got to be a big *ss gear in the rear and you would hve a harder time driving without sliding all over the place...
with my ford rear end, i am calculating my final
drive ratio... which takes into account your tire size etc... i can calculate what my rpm will be at a certain speed and thus pick the correct gear ratio for what i want to do (top speed in a sense)...
lets say your tire diameter is 27.5" (total tire/rim)
you would have to have a 4.56 gear drive ratio for your rpm to be around 2507 at 45mph, in 3rd gear (which is 1:1)... if your rpm is higher at 45mph, then you would have to have an even bigger gear in the rear...
hope this makes sense...
