Quote:
Originally Posted by rgunlock
Interior is looking great in color!
I've been driving with the 4.10s, SM465/NP205 and 33" tires for a week or so now. It does great for my normal day to day driving which rarely gets above 50mph. 1st/granny low is useless for me - can't even shift into 1st anyway. 2nd is good for starting off and about the first 50 feet. Also good for crawling through parking garages. 3rd gets you up to speed quick and is perfect for turns. I've got a fairly torquey motor also, and 4th is good for a pretty large range, from sharp curves at ~1500rpm to up to 55-60mph which my tach says is 2500-3000 rpm. I would not be comfortable getting out on the highway where anything less than 70mph is obstructing traffic around here. I've got fairly loud mufflers and an imperfectly balanced drivetrain and driving a sustained 3000+ rpm isn't comfortable due to noise and light vibration. My truck seems to feel most comfortable cruising at around 2000-2500 rpm. I will be attempting to do my NV4500 swap this weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works out. Hope this helps.
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That is pretty much how I remember my old W-200. The Power Wagon came with a NP435 four speed and a NP203 transfer case with 4.10 gears in the axles. The stock tires were Firestone Wide Oval 9.00x16.5 bias plys. These were okay back when the speed limit was 55 mph nation wide, but once the states began raising things, a set of 33x12.50s helped a bit more. The truck got 10 mpg no matter what, but at 70+, the 360 V8 was humming a pretty good song, even with the taller tires.
As to first gear, it was pretty much unusable unless you had a heavy load that you needed to get rolling or you just wanted to idle along in SoCal rush hour traffic. When I was teaching my kid sister how to drive, I took her out on a hill and let her dump the clutch in first gear, to demonstrate she couldn't stall the truck. With that fear gone, the rest came easy.
-Joe