rear end gears

brakeman1956

Junior Member
i have a 1940 ford woody. Rear end is stamped 9-346,or 345. Have a in line drive shaft Borg warner over drive. Top speed is 65mph at 2300 rpms. Would like to get more mph out it ,its there a gear lower, or is that to low to pull its self, Rand
 
Sounds more like engine power problem, I had 39 with a60hp and (stock) it would do 74, and had driven all day at 70
 
What is it like with the overdrive not engaged.

Actually a 40 woody is a big heavy beast, not very aerodynamic, depending on your engine, 65 might be pretty good.

Ignoring the last digit, the numbers calculate to 3.78 in the rear end.

Mart.
 
A 9/34 pinion/ring gear gives you a very common 3.78 gear ratio, not in overdrive. Based on your speed versus rpm, I calculate your overdrive at about 36%. That is an effective gear ratio of 2.78, which is pretty tall for a weak flathead. How fast will it go not in overdrive? Out of overdrive (assuming 36% overdrive), you should get 65 mph at about 3100 rpm. It would be a bit noisy and uneconomical to cruise at that rpm and higher.

You have three choices.
1) Change rear end gears from 3.78 to 4.11; that would get your effective gear ration in overdrive to 3.02. You might get a little more speed out of that lame engine.
2) Change the overdrive from 35% to something lower, maybe about 26%. That also gets you to an effective gear ratio of 3.00, and maybe a little more speed.

3) Tune and/or build up the engine to generate more torque in the mid (2000's) rpm range. Start with a compression check; you do not want to see any cylinder under 85 psi, or a wide disparity (>15 psi) between cylinders. Check the plugs to see if the engine is running to lean (grey/whitish insulators); or differences between cylinders. If the plugs and compression looks healthy, you might try advancing the timing and increasing compression ratio. Mill the heads if you want to keep stock look.

A healthy engine should push that crate to 90+, and maybe a little higher in overdrive.
 
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