Great post! Its amazing how people love to find fault like pointing out a technicality that has nothing to do with the message being conveyed. Obviously there is a lot of misunderstanding of gear ratios and your posting is right on. I've heard people call higher ratios (lower gearing) as "better". For example "I'm getting Sasquatch to get the better gear ratio". Its not about being better, but what makes sense for your purpose. Huge tires and low gearing makes sense for a hard core rock crawler, but not for a daily driver. I have just a Base with base tires and it fits my needs perfectly as a daily driver that will get me to the ski area or trailhead.There is a lot of misinformation on here regarding these two gear ratios, so I wanted to put it bed once and for all:
Overview:
The 4.7 ratio comes standard with the sasquatch package, and cannot be added independently without the entire sasquatch package.
THE DELIMMA:
I'll start with saying that my badlands doesn't have the sasquatch package. This should mean that my bronco will have a lower crawl ratio than a sas, since it has higher gearing. It should get better gas mileage, even run lower RPM's on the highway. It should even be slower on take off, right! Wrong!
The Explanation:
When we change the tire size of our vehicle, we also change the mechanical advantage. Think of a winch: the more line on the drum, the weaker the pulling power of the motor. In other words, the larger the circumference of the drum, the more strain on the winch motor. In a nutshell, added layers of cable=less mechanical advantage.
This same logic applies to the Bronco. A 4.7 ratio with 33 inch tires would indeed have better mechanical advantage than a 4.46 ratio! However, adding 2 inch taller tires (sasquatch) will decrease the mechanical advantage, therefore nearly equalizing the crawl ratio to a 4.46! My guess is, Ford realized this while developing the bronco; hence the 4.7 ratio option...
To Summarize:
A 4.46 ratio with 33 inch tires will have an equivalent mechanical advantage to the 35 inch with the 4.7 ratio on the sasquatch. That being said, if you are planning to change for bigger tires, you will lose SOME of your mechanical advantage. Therefore, if your plan is to put larger than 33 inch tires on your bronco (I didn't want bigger), then you definitely need to go with the sasquatch package to maintain as much torque as possible with the added rotational forces.
Cheers!
**As pointed out by some replies, you CAN get a manual badlands with the 4.7 ratio, but you do lose trail-turn assist.. which is why I didn't. I was strictly speaking of the automatic, I should have clarified.. although that is not at all the point of my post**
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