Velocity Blue Bronco Raptor on 40's and 3" RPG lift collars

[swamp2]

I'm running 40s on my 2dr FE , with the new 5.38 gears and the FP tune, the truck feels FASTER now than with my 37s, 4.7 and no tune.
I was surprised at the performance. These little engines produce ALOT of low end torque. The brakes do seem somewhat softer now tho.

Sounds like a good combo.

Do keep in mind, a regear (even when keeping tires unchanged) doesn't make a vehicle have better performance across multiple gears. It only bumps in gear acceleration at the expense of shifting sooner and into a lower power rpm range post each shift.

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[BigMeatsBronco]

Sounds like a good combo.

Do keep in mind, a regear (even when keeping tires unchanged) doesn't make a vehicle have better performance across multiple gears. It only bumps in gear acceleration at the expense of shifting sooner and into a lower power rpm range post each shift.

Ok, I disagree, lower gearing can and does affect performance....I don't need to go over 100 very often and I'd rather accelerate to 100 as quickly as possible, lower gearing helps DRAMATICALLY with this. Each gear pulls harder. Unless you have 1000ft/lbs of torque and limited RPM band, (like a big diesel) lower gearing always make it easier for any engine to accelerate faster.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/gear-ratio

 

[swamp2]

Ok, I disagree, lower gearing can and does affect performance....I don't need to go over 100 very often and I'd rather accelerate to 100 as quickly as possible, lower gearing helps DRAMATICALLY with this. Each gear pulls harder. Unless you have 1000ft/lbs of torque and limited RPM band, (like a big diesel) lower gearing always make it easier for any engine to accelerate faster.

You can disagree but you are not correct. It is a very common misperception.

You need more average power (hp) to get any better across gear performance. Feeling faster or having an initial in gear initial acceleration does not transfer to better performance across gears. The down side of each gear pulling harder is again, you can't stay in the gear as long and then again have to shift into a gear with much less acceleration and in a part of the power curve with less power. Basic physics here - without adding engine power, the average power put down to the ground can not change. If this were the case, all cars would come with very high gear multiplication and they would perform better.

You can see this play out in any vehicle performance simulator as well (which are quite accurate). You can win some minor, single gear metrics or perhaps across small parts of two gears with a diff mod, but you simply can not win overall contests across multiple gears.

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

You can disagree but you are not correct. It is a very common misperception.

You need more average power (hp) to get any better across gear performance. Feeling faster or having an initial in gear initial acceleration does not transfer to better performance across gears. The down side of each gear pulling harder is again, you can't stay in the gear as long and then again have to shift into a gear with much less acceleration and in a part of the power curve with less power. Basic physics here - without adding engine power, the average power put down to the ground can not change. If this were the case, all cars would come with very high gear multiplication and they would perform better.

You can see this play out in any vehicle performance simulator as well (which are erequite accurate). You can win some minor, single gear metrics or perhaps across small parts of two gears with a diff mod, but you simply can not win overall contests across multiple gears.

You only mentioned hp...let's see the torque in your equation...this is not even worth my time arguing over. Proper gearing wins races, period. With any given hp and torque, the desired rpms can be achieved with gear reduction. If the engine is only capable of a maximum speed of 200 mph with a given weight and parasitic drag, then by reducing the gearing to achieve a maximum of 100 miles an hour will give the engine a mechanical gearing advantage and it will accelerate faster to 100 mph with the lower gear ratio than it will with the gear ratio set up to go to 200 mph. Simple as that.

In you game simulator you mentioned it does exactly the opposite of what you suggest....lower the gearing and watch the acceleration performance increase, make it taller and acceleration suffers but top speed increases. That's the way 99% of us understand it, if you don't, oh well.
Perfect example of when I used to race folks stop light to stop light, my trick was use low range...top speed was 60, but it didn't matter because I could beat higher powered cars (to 60) with lower gearing .

 

[swamp2]

You only mentioned hp...let's see the torque in your equation...this is not even worth my time arguing over. Proper gearing wins races, period. With any given hp and torque, the desired rpms can be achieved with gear reduction. If the engine is only capable of a maximum speed of 200 mph with a given weight and parasitic drag, then by reducing the gearing to achieve a maximum of 100 miles an hour will give the engine a mechanical gearing advantage and it will accelerate faster to 100 mph with the lower gear ratio than it will with the gear ratio set up to go to 200 mph. Simple as that.

In you game simulator you mentioned it does exactly the opposite of what you suggest....lower the gearing and watch the acceleration performance increase, make it taller and acceleration suffers but top speed increases. That's the way 99% of us understand it, if you don't, oh well.
Perfect example of when I used to race folks stop light to stop light, my trick was use low range...top speed was 60, but it didn't matter because I could beat higher powered cars (to 60) with lower gearing .

Agree, not worth arguing. Hard to resist though...

The same folks that think torque is more important or somehow the key to performance, as opposed to hp, also tend to misunderstand final drive reduction and its changes.

The basic equations (which I can provide and explain in complete detail) to determine instantaneous acceleration absolutely depend on engine torque, but when you take into account the gear reduction in the formula to get to wheel torque, these combined are basically a proxy for hp (in a car with fairly optimized gear ratios of course). Also, instantaneous performance means almost nothing, one must sustain performance over time to actually achieve most meaningful performance results.

If you argue a final drive mod can help overall vehicle performance, you must also be able to explain how taking this to the extreme can extremely improve overall vehicle performance, which again it can't. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You don't get improved overall performance without more power, period.

Why do sport bikes trample hogs with way more torque. Power (and weight) but mostly it's through gearing and power (and the requisite very high redlines)?

Why do F1 cars not care much about torque but are obsessed with power, say 300 ft lb and 850 hp?

Lastly your arguments about 100 vs 200 mph are irrelevant and are completely obfuscated by drag, which also goes into said formula I mentioned above. The fastest vehicle to 100 mph is the one that produces the highest average power during said contest, which again with reasonably optimized gearing, is the same as the highest average torque to the wheels. Period.

Drag racing to 60 is as much or even more so about traction and tires than gearing or power. If contestant A, with less power than contestant B wins a zero to 60 contest then it's almost certain traction and wheelspin are critical.

If you still don't get it, I can post some simulation results that will show the very minor benefits of an altered FD ratio. I can show them in Bronco Raptor, Ferrari or Semi truck.

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

Agree, not worth arguing. Hard to resist though...

The same folks that think torque is more important or somehow the key to performance, as opposed to hp, also tend to misunderstand final drive reduction and its changes.

The basic equations (which I can provide and explain in complete detail) to determine instantaneous acceleration absolutely depend on engine torque, but when you take into account the gear reduction in the formula to get to wheel torque, these combined are basically a proxy for hp (in a car with fairly optimized gear ratios of course). Also, instantaneous performance means almost nothing, one must sustain performance over time to actually achieve most meaningful performance results.

If you argue a final drive mod can help overall vehicle performance, you must also be able to explain how taking this to the extreme can extremely improve overall vehicle performance, which again it can't. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You don't get improved overall performance without more power, period.

Why do sport bikes trample hogs with way more torque. Power (and weight) but mostly it's through gearing and power (and the requisite very high redlines)?

Why do F1 cars not care much about torque but are obsessed with power, say 300 ft lb and 850 hp?

Lastly your arguments about 100 vs 200 mph are irrelevant and are completely obfuscated by drag, which also goes into said formula I mentioned above. The fastest vehicle to 100 mph is the one that produces the highest average power during said contest, which again with reasonably optimized gearing, is the same as the highest average torque to the wheels. Period.

Drag racing to 60 is as much or even more so about traction and tires than gearing or power. If contestant A, with less power than contestant B wins a zero to 60 contest then it's almost certain traction and wheelspin are critical.

If you still don't get it, I can post some simulation results that will show the very minor benefits of an altered FD ratio. I can show them in Bronco Raptor, Ferrari or Semi truck.

Believe whatever you want...I already said in the post the engine gained power with the tune. And ive explained how the gearing drop to 5.38s helps the engine work less with 40s...whats the big issue here?


By your illusion, an 18 wheeler semi should have only one gear, because the gear reduction offered by the 18 speeds, offers NO performance improvement
...and the only scenarios currently available to keep the engine in the most powerful high rpm sweet spot, during acceleration the entire time, is with a giant torque converter and only one gear, or variable ratio belt drive. Neither are considered applicable for most on road vehicles. Good luck trying to do that.

So funny you brought up sport bikes...which nearly all of them have a near 2:1 reduction on the crank before the transmission. Hogs usually dont. The gearing reduction on these does increase the performance by keeping the little engine in the powerbands sweet spot. But they ALSO have a much longer wider RPM range than the Hogs do. This longer range and wider rpm operation does have a direction affect on performance comparisons. You can't leave RPMs range out because all engines have a redline and don't accelerate indefinitely.

Imagine a fat man on one side of a teeder totter...and a weight on other the end of a 10 ft board...gearing is like the length of this board, and it affects the leverage available against the load or weight. Make the board shorter ((on the weighted side of fulcrum)is like lowering gears,)) and the man can lift more weight to ballance the board. Sure the total work available will not change , but the shorter board (gearing) will allow the fat man (engine) to lift more weight (spinning 40s) ....that's how I understand it. Sorry if you dont.

 

[swamp2]

Believe whatever you want...I already said in the post the engine gained power with the tune. And ive explained how the gearing drop to 5.38s helps the engine work less with 40s...whats the big issue here?

Going in circles. Let me be clear as to what I am claiming and facts, not "beliefs".

1. HP is what governs acceleration performance, not torque. Sure, if you have added hp to your vehicle that will absolutely help performance across the board. Of course it is really hp at the wheels divided by weight, but we all implicitly know and acknowledge weight effects.
2. FD ratios and tire sizes: On the geometric side there is no overall performance advantage to either. Some isolated, single gear or certain metric/contests may be slightly better or worse from the purely "leverage" aspect of these changes. Tire size changes complicate things because these are always, in practice, accompanied by both a mass change and moment of inertia change. Theses both hurt performance across the board as they take more power to accelerate them (when larger) as opposed to that power going into the acceleration of the vehicle itself. The size and gearing geometric/size effects do not do this. FD ratios help with instantaneous and in-gear acceleration (obviously not beyond tire grip limit) and perception of performance and thus make some sense when changing tires sizes. But again the above in bold still applies.

The caveat for #2 is that the transmission has intelligent gear choices and spacing focused on achieving nearly optimized performance for the vehicle.

If you can't explain why pushing a huge limit on FD ratio does not provide an overall improvement in performance, then you do not fully understand these effects. Please take your argument that FD does improve overall performance and explain how doing a very large one makes a large overall performance improvement. You keep skipping this absolutely critical question and shows the gap in your opinion/understanding.

Here is simulation data for this case with the Bronco Raptor, NO CHANGES between them except #2 has a 5.38 FD ratio vs. stock 4.71. This simulation accounts for the power curve, redline, gear and FD ratios, shift times, optimized shift points, vehicle weight, drive train and other parastic losses, tire losses, aerodynamic losses, launch and tire slip, tire friction and more. Its comprehensive and uses basic science/engineering elements of vehicle performance that are well know, well validated and not open for debate. I've also written my own version of this software from scratch which validates against this tools as well as broad real-world performance metrics across a wide range of vehicles.

Observations on results:

No overall performance gain (obviously as no power change). Some metrics are improved especially when lugging the engine in too high of a gear. What is not modeled here is the obvious thing to do in either vehicle - multiple downshifts either letter the software do so or grabbing a few shifts with paddles. Those benefits will more or less disappear under such circumstances as often you will be able to get a lower gear with the stock FD ratio. So, yes, being a lazy driver (unwilling to shift) and trying to get a good performance result in the wrong gear for actually getting performance, can be an advantage of a regear...

Obviously, I am also open to quantitative, empirical test results showing overall performance gains after a FD swap. No your up to 60 "drag racing" results do not qualify.

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

Going in circles. Let me be clear as to what I am claiming and facts, not "beliefs".

1. HP is what governs acceleration performance, not torque. Sure, if you have added hp to your vehicle that will absolutely help performance across the board. Of course it is really hp at the wheels divided by weight, but we all implicitly know and acknowledge weight effects.
2. FD ratios and tire sizes: On the geometric side there is no overall performance advantage to either. Some isolated, single gear or certain metric/contests may be slightly better or worse from the purely "leverage" aspect of these changes. Tire size changes complicate things because these are always, in practice, accompanied by both a mass change and moment of inertia change. Theses both hurt performance across the board as they take more power to accelerate them (when larger) as opposed to that power going into the acceleration of the vehicle itself. The size and gearing geometric/size effects do not do this. FD ratios help with instantaneous and in-gear acceleration (obviously not beyond tire grip limit) and perception of performance and thus make some sense when changing tires sizes. But again the above in bold still applies.

The caveat for #2 is that the transmission has intelligent gear choices and spacing focused on achieving nearly optimized performance for the vehicle.

If you can't explain why pushing a huge limit on FD ratio does not provide an overall improvement in performance, then you do not fully understand these effects. Please take your argument that FD does improve overall performance and explain how doing a very large one makes a large overall performance improvement. You keep skipping this absolutely critical question and shows the gap in your opinion/understanding.

Here is simulation data for this case with the Bronco Raptor, NO CHANGES between them except #2 has a 5.38 FD ratio vs. stock 4.71. This simulation accounts for the power curve, redline, gear and FD ratios, shift times, optimized shift points, vehicle weight, drive train and other parastic losses, tire losses, aerodynamic losses, launch and tire slip, tire friction and more. Its comprehensive and uses basic science/engineering elements of vehicle performance that are well know, well validated and not open for debate. I've also written my own version of this software from scratch which validates against this tools as well as broad real-world performance metrics across a wide range of vehicles.

Observations on results:

No overall performance gain (obviously as no power change). Some metrics are improved especially when lugging the engine in too high of a gear. What is not modeled here is the obvious thing to do in either vehicle - multiple downshifts either letter the software do so or grabbing a few shifts with paddles. Those benefits will more or less disappear under such circumstances as often you will be able to get a lower gear with the stock FD ratio. So, yes, being a lazy driver (unwilling to shift) and trying to get a good performance result in the wrong gear for actually getting performance, can be an advantage of a regear...

Obviously, I am also open to quantitative, empirical test results showing overall performance gains after a FD swap. No your up to 60 "drag racing" results do not qualify.

Your chart shows both changes in acceleration and in top speed... and if you had added 25 hp like I did and 40" tire into your equation, the results would be even more drastic or noticeable.

Clearly gearing DOES make changes (or improves in certain areas) as I stated in orig post.

I don't need a bronco that is geared to the moon...top speed w/o limiter is WAY too high for my preferences.
110mph top speed in 10th gear at redline would be perfect for me.

And in my experience, with many regears of FD, lower FD helps acceleration. It lets the engine have more leverage against the load at a lower mph.

Additionally, it changes the range of mphs each transmission gear has with a given RPMs range. (This is why you can't go paddle shifting your tall geared shit to hope for better acceleration results, and that also alters one side of the formula giving fake data results....i mean you have to paddle shift both fo accurate comparisons)

Take this FD difference farther and you'll see bigger changes, for example let's see you simulation with 6:1 ratio VS a 2:1 final drive ratio? Let's get two identical vehicles and gear them like this and see what one performs better at 0-100 and 30-70! Hahaha the results are so predictable it's funny.

Furthermore, alot taller gearing would be like starting out in 2nd or 3rd gear and then skipping 2 more gears and shifting into 5th or 6th. No acceleration advantages there at all. Only top speed increase that is useless on most roads.


So since I don't need to go 170mph, lowered FD ratios does have advantages especially with bigger tires, by allow my engine to be in the sweet spot more often...less lugging, and more rpms.(just like the chart below shows)

If a lower gearset was available like 6: 1 , I would have chosen that for the performance advantages I've mentioned already.

And if a transmission with a wider range of gearing was available that too would be advantageous for my application. A lower 1st gear would be nice. Oh yeah, lower FD helps there too.(another performance that tall gearing can't even touch.)

Look at this chart to understand how gearing affects performance, and be sure to absorb the concept that one side has less power and the other side has more power available to the wheels, because gearing is a torque multiplier.

 

[swamp2]

Do keep in mind, a regear (even when keeping tires unchanged) doesn't make a vehicle have better performance across multiple gears.

Ok, I disagree, lower gearing can and does affect performance....

I stated "across multiple gears", you disagreed, I have showed that you are wrong. The changes are insignificant and there are gains AND losses.

Here is stock vs. a 6:1 FD. Is it becoming more clear? No meaningful (statistically significant) difference to 100 mph, NONE.

10 well, closely spaced gears make the "advantages" of a FD change even less.

You continue to babble without answering the KEY question I keep posing. Please answer before continuing the discussion.

We are also awaiting some real world evidence showing the gains you claim.

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

I stated "across multiple gears", you disagreed, I have showed that you are wrong. The changes are insignificant and there are gains AND losses.

Here is stock vs. a 6:1 FD. Is it becoming more clear? No meaningful (statistically significant) difference to 100 mph, NONE.

10 well, closely spaced gears make the "advantages" of a FD change even less.

You continue to babble without answering the KEY question I keep posing. Please answer before continuing the discussion.

We are also awaiting some real world evidence showing the gains you claim.

Thanks for the chart...it shows changes in acceleration and top speed just like I mentioned.
Youve shown the acceleration difference i was claiming ...especially noticeable in the 30-50 and 5 to 60, like I originally mentioned.

If you don't think a half a second means anything 5 to 60 well then we might as well stop communicating right now. Your chart just backs up exactly what I said...lower geared one appears quicker. Geeze who would have guessed that. ROFL

Why don't you just get some 39s and 2.54 gears and let us all know how much you like it...and brag about all the advantages to that set up? Were all ears.

 

[swamp2]

Thanks for the chart...it shows changes in acceleration and top speed just like I mentioned.
Youve shown the acceleration difference i was claiming ...especially noticeable in the 30-50 and 5 to 60, like I originally mentioned.

If you don't think a half a second means anything 5 to 60 well then we might as well stop communicating right now. Your chart just backs up exactly what I said...lower geared one appears quicker. Geeze who would have guessed that. ROFL

Why don't you just get some 39s and 2.54 gears and let us all know how much you like it...and brag about all the advantages to that set up? Were all ears.

Keep avoiding the key question here. Why won't/can't you answer it?

Also, asked over and over - show some real data.

What part of OVERALL don't you get? There are contest which one FD wins and contests that the other wins and overall there is no advantage. Change that 5-60 to 10-70 or 5-50, etc. and this "advantage" shown will likely disappear. It is an isolated occurrence.

There is a disadvantage for 30-50 not an advantage (using the lowest optimal gear of course). Can you read?

The top speed results would be real if the truck wasn't limited by software, which it is somewhere around 110-115. The higher FD ratio clearly loses on this front.

I'm not the one here who has made a costly investment with a vested interest in justifying the choice...

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

Keep avoiding the key question here. Why won't/can't you answer it?

Also, asked over and over - show some real data.

What part of OVERALL don't you get? There are contest which one FD wins and contests that the other wins and overall there is no advantage. Change that 5-60 to 10-70 or 5-50, etc. and this "advantage" shown will likely disappear. It is an isolated occurrence.

There is a disadvantage for 30-50 not an advantage (using the lowest optimal gear of course). Can you read?

The top speed results would be real if the truck wasn't limited by software, which it is somewhere around 110-115. The higher FD ratio clearly loses on this front.

I'm not the one here who has made a costly investment with a vested interest in justifying the choice...

Go read up...I'm done.

https://www-motortrend-com.cdn.ampp...gear-ratio-for-your-muscle-car-or-drag-racer/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/gear-ratio

 

[swamp2]

Go read up...I'm done.

Finally. However, it's sad you can't take this as a learning experience.

Nothing you posted in those links contradicts my primary numbered claims above or throughout this discussion.

The irony runs so deep, you refer to my simulations, which you initially and falsely claimed don't even work, then you draw incorrect conclusion from very clear data showing the opposite.

Until you can explain why an enormous bump in final drive, with all of that precious and massive new gear vs. old gear torque will backfire and hurt overall performance instead of boosting it, you do not understand the fundamentals of vehicle performance.

hp is king (for high performance, not towing obviously...), FD swaps can not provide broad overall performance gains because there is no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[BigMeatsBronco]

Finally. However, it's sad you can't take this as a learning experience.

Nothing you posted in those links contradicts my primary numbered claims above or throughout this discussion.

The irony runs so deep, you refer to my simulations, which you initially and falsely claimed don't even work, then you draw incorrect conclusion from very clear data showing the opposite.

Until you can explain why an enormous bump in final drive, with all of that precious and massive new gear vs. old gear torque will backfire and hurt overall performance instead of boosting it, you do not understand the fundamentals of vehicle performance.

hp is king (for high performance, not towing obviously...), FD swaps can not provide broad overall performance gains because there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Nope... I'm saying the 5.38s corrected the leverage disadvantages the 40s induced. It puts the engine back in the sweet spot in all 10 speeds. Also keeps my theoretical top speed lower than with 4.7s. And as my (widely accepted) gearing chart shows, this setup leans to the side that says " more power or towing capabilities".
That's the performance advantages I've claimed, nothing more, nothing less...
Your still arguing against a widely accepted chart that every R&P manufacturer has suggested for 60+ yrs.

The free lunch your referring to is incorrect, even as the articles back up my statement that gearing is a comprise, I'm GAINING acceleration at the expense of top speed reduction. Which is exactly what I've been saying all along. I don't need to go above 100MPH.

I feel sorry for the OPs post getting hijacked, if you want to argue further, then send me a DM and I'd be happy to educate you further.

 

[swamp2]

The free lunch your referring to is incorrect, even as the articles back up my statement that gearing is a comprise, I'm GAINING acceleration at the expense of top speed reduction. Which is exactly what I've been saying all along. I don't need to go above 100MPH.

You're definitely not done and neither am I.

Yes top speed, irrelevant or not, is a compromise in a regear. The additional and highly significant compromise you don't understand and accept is the need to shift sooner into a lower power rpm range as well as being in a slower accelerating gear for more time. There are also cases where you could downshift on stock gearing but couldn't with a higher FD ratio.

More torque at the wheels in each gear seems compelling and powerful but is misleading/incomplete and doesn't account for time, average power to the wheels and effects across multiple gears.

Again until you look at overall performance and across multiple gears you're missing this less obvious phenomena.

These are precisely reflected in the simulation results I've shown.

I feel sorry for the OPs post getting hijacked, if you want to argue further, then send me a DM and I'd be happy to educate you further.

Me too. I've asked the admin to peel off this debate to a new thread.

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