Dana 35 and 8.8 question

[poomero]

Will a Dana 35 and a 8.8 support 35’s for mild wheeling or do you need to swap them?

I have a 95 4.0 and I’m starting my build also what gears would you recommend so you can still drive it on the highway?

 

[Curious Hound]

Yes. For mild wheeling, it's good. I would recommend 4.56 gears.

 

[Uncle Gump]

I'm probably never gonna see 35's... well maybe... if I did... that truck would be more off road then on road. It would probably have a 302 and c4 with a 4.10 gear. On factory powertrain... I'd likely go 4.88.

 

[Dantheman1540]

I really enjoy the 4.56s in my 94, 4.0, 5spd truck. I have 32”s now and are going to step up to 33”s shortly. It has plenty of power even to tow a small trailer with quads on it, highway speed rpm is pretty bad close to 3k at 70mph but I rarely do highways in this truck. I don’t necessarily feel for my light wheeling that I need more low range, but I am eyeing a doubler box just for situations where I’m recovering another vehicle, or where a trail gets very technical.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

My Choptop is a D-35 front and 7.5” rear with 4.10s, 4.0 and FM-146 on 35’s. It works reasonably well. Deeper gears (4.56 or 4.88) would make it a little happier all around and a doubler would be really nice, but for what I do with it, it works well enough for now.

Somewhere in the future I’m going to build a more serious wheeler, been kicking around a few ideas, but I’m either going to run a D-44 and 8.8 or just go to Superduty axles.

That all said, the Choptop goes amazingly well. My 92 Ranger STX with 4.0, auto (with shift kit) on 30” tires with D-35 and 8.8 did well. The RBV platform just seems to really do well off-road.

 

[sgtsandman]

The guys above own the trucks and knows what works. I would suggest looking at this link concerning tire size and gearing: https://www.therangerstation.com/how-to_pages/gear_ratio_tire_size_chart.shtml

While my truck is newer and has a bit more of a powerful engine, I found it to be a bit wanting with the terrain we have here with the 3.73:1 gears and the factory 29" tires. Now that I have 31" tires on it, there are times it struggles. 4.10:1 gears will put it back to where it was, 4.56:1 will put it where it should be for what I do and my preferences. If I really wanted to give it some grunt, I could put 4.88:1 gears in it but that could wreck my highway driving ability or at least my fuel mileage would take a big dump.

If you live in a fairly flat area with nothing more that rolling terrain, you could probably get away with some 4.10:1s but 4.56:1 or 4.88:1 would be better. The chart I referenced is a bit misleading though, sticking with higher gears (lower numbers) isn't necessarily going to give you better fuel economy. In some cases, the blue region could get the same fuel economy as the red. Green is a compromise between the two and might give you the best fuel economy without the truck being a dog but it is a compromise. Get up and go won't be the best and highway trips might not have the best fuel mileage. If you do a lot of highway, the upper spectrum of the green might be best for you. If you are more local, lower green or upper red might be better. Assuming you can find the gear sets. There has been some discussion about some of the ratios no longer being easy to find.

 

[00t444e]

Yes but no bigger than that, 4.56 gears is what I would use.