installed gryphon

[Jackpine]

Originally Posted by robandkat

Jack, thanks for all the helpful info. I will check out your Q&A page. Do you think that I should change the gears? My wife uses the truck to commute to work and to pull a two horse trailer.

Two horses are what, about 3000#? Then the trailer is another 1000-1500 I guess. I'd rather see the original effective gearing in this setup because what you have puts a strain on your transmission. However, I think it will handle it.

The reason you like a high gear ratio for towing heavy loads is because the transmission output shaft then "sees" very little "load", and this lets the transmission operate with the Torque Converter locked most of the time and without having to downshift so much. The downside of high gear ratios though, is decreased fuel economy. Trouble is, with a 4x4, you have to replace BOTH sets of gears. Probably about $3000.00? (I'm guessing here, and it's a real "WAG").

The effective gear ratio of 3.55 you have with 3.73 gears (and I'm pretty sure that's what you have) is not bad, it's just not designed particularly for towing. However, as a daily driver, it's just fine.

One thing to do is monitor the Transmission Fluid Temperature. I pull a 3600# trailer and have seen it get up to about 214 when pulling up a steep, long grade. If you see it getting significantly above this, you need different gears.

Poke around in our new "towing" section. I'm tempted to move this there, but I'll leave it here for now. There's some really good information there about how people dealt with the need to pull really heavy loads.

- Jack