*rant* gearing, my pet peeve

[madbouncy]

I've been looking around a lot at turbos and stuff, mostly so later on, when I decide what to do with my car I'll be able to compare it to others to know what i'll need to make my hp goals and so on. Well I started seeing that people were talking about how turbo lag is good in that it gives you traction, where as if you had full boost at that rpm you would just spin your tires. Now, as I've looked at cars, it seems like gearing is over looked by the vast majority, mostly just because it's not easy to find a gearbox with different ratios, but even the final drive can be ignored a lot it seems. The only time I hear it tossed around is when people are looking at vlsd's so they make sure to get the same ratio as they had before. I just believe that if you're spinning your tires so much, you're car isn't even close to geared correctly. I thought about it some, and at first I thought that the turbo lag could be an advantage. It would allow you to daily drive your car without having to turn your boost so low that you're out of your turbos effiency or because you just because that's as low as your setup allows. Now when you tried to floor it, you would have less power early and then build it up pretty quickly, but by then you're moving faster already and as long as you're not still in first, your tires should hold their ground. But then I thought about how if you were racing, you would never launch so that you're in the part of your rpm band when you're turbo is still spooling so much. So essentially, you're slowing your launches down by either dropping your rpms a lot, or feathering out your clutch really slowly. Now, by the time you get to third gear, you don't have to worry about traction, and you have more acceleration because if your higher final drive. So I thought, maybe the extra speed in the remaining gears outweighs the way you have to launch, itwould just be really learning how to launch it. I rememberd about the article (SCC mag maybe?) about the gt28rs, they said they had to launch in 2nd gear to get their best times. But you're wasting an entire gear. I understood in their case because they didn't have time to swap something for a lower final drive, they wanted to get it to the tarck to see how the turbo performed. But it just seems like a lot of people ignore it to me and could do a lot better from it, plus the 240 isn't geared that great to begin with, having 6 gears would do wonders, so if oyu had to skip 1st, you'd be down to like a 4spd, which would be even worse. Alright, I'll shut up, I just can't sleep. holy crap this thing is long

[Arrow]

In a way I sort-of share in your idea that readjusting the greaing of the 240 would help out some. My only arguement against it is that it wouldn't be cheap by any means and not easily done (at least not for most of us) I believe that there was a person that had bought a 6 speed transmission for their 240 and were installing it... but then again this was almost 2 years ago that I read about it and I haven't heard anything since.... I'm pretty sure that if someone did enough research they could find a way to get it all to work.... I mean where I live, there are many race shops around that I could talk to..... but also in my case it would almost be a waste of my time b/c I don't have anywhere close to the money to make anything possible.... so, my time and money is better suited toward getting my car running better and some other more 'simple' tasks.... Just my 2 cents though..... and this post ended up being quite long as well.... sheesh. Also, I like having the same gearing so that my speedo will be close to being accurate to avoid speeding and getting nailled by the cops... and I have no idea where to take a speedo to get it recalibrated and that might also be $$.... I'm done for now... lol

[Dattebayo]

Why would you need to change the gearing?

The 240's gearing is the same as the silvia and the 180sx. They are both available as turbo cars.

[Nismo_Freak]

Most people's cars spin the tires because they have improper tires for what they are trying to do, and/or they have too much power or too heavy of a foot.

What good is power w/o traction...

Besides, 1st gear in just about any car is a given that it will spin the tires if engaged aggressively. At the track you should be on nothing less than drag radials if you want to run a good time.

[Nismo_Freak]

Why would you need to change the gearing?

The 240's gearing is the same as the silvia and the 180sx. They are both available as turbo cars.

They have different 5th gear ratios, and final drives between different trims, engines, etc.

[Dattebayo]

really.

facinating. Why would the engine make a difference? Other than the size of the flywheel or the ring gear size in the differential i cant see why they'd be different. Sure if they have different 5th gears, but ive seen tham all and could not visually detect any difference. I guess i should have brought out my guages...

[madbouncy]

I didn't mean change the ratios in the transmission, like I said, you're really limited there and it be custom. I just meant it be nice to have a six speed. I was mostly talking about the final drive ratio. I agree about what freak said too, most people just over look traction and bigger tires would do wonders. But I'd rather get some bigger tires and have something other then drag radials and just lower the final drive a bit. Like he said, the turboed silvias in japan had lower final drive gear ratios because of their extra power, so I can't imagine it be too hard to get a lower ratio in the back.