It's a new world! Stock 3.73 to 4.88's

Admittedly, I don't punch above my weight in off-roading experience that many of you have but I have an experience I wanted to share. I had 285.70.17 KO2's on ICON wheels on my Gen 5 and the power band really sucked, obviously no surprise there. I replaced my 3.73 stock rear diff with a 4.88 and....Holy S__T! It's a new world for sure. The testimonial is gas mileage isn't as good but still I find it totally worth the trade out, especially on highway and off-road steep terrain driving.

 

Thanks for the feedback man, nice investment

so worse gas mileage eh?
and isn’t it proper to swap front diff too or not with sr5?
Thx

 

Great feedback! I see a lot of posts of people claiming that you do not "need" to re-gear with larger tires, however everyone that does regear raves about it.

Going with the 488s was smart, now if you eventually want to go bigger with tire sizes you're all set for that.

 

SR5/Pro/Offroad are all the same on the front differential. Pro's and Offroads have a rear e-locker from the factory, but with an SR5 you have the option of adding one when you do the gears.

You can also add a locker in the front but that is a rabbit hole in its self.

If I had an SR5 and were re-gearing, I would for sure try to budget in the rear e-locker addition

 

I know all dis

What I'm asking is, on a 4WD 4R when you change the gears on the rear axle, isn't it ideal to change the front axle to the same ratio?

Thanks

 

I should say “or not sr5 2WD”
Not sure which trim OP has

 

(As always) I have a dumb question

Does any body know if there is a way I can get info what gear on transmission at any given time? Is there a X code on scanguage2 that displays the gear number?
I just want to see how much my 5th gear is been used at highway speeds.

 

I just searched for 10 min lol
I dunno
Can’t find a chart or graph with this info on 5th gens
scanguage2 maybe
All I can really find if things like a dynamometer test and this website helps (these things give you answers on the rpm but don’t tell you flat out what gear you’re in at any given time)

 

Yes, if you ever want to put it in 4WD, you need to change the front and rear. The only exception to this is sometimes mud truck builders will run a numerically lower gear ratio in the front, the theory being that the front tires spinning slightly faster than the rear helps pull them through the mud. Don't know if anyone has actually done any testing on this, would be cool to look up on YouTube.

Another exception would be if one were running different sized tires on the front end rear, then you would compensate for that with different gear ratios. A truck I follow on Instagram has 40-in tires in the front, 60-in tractor tires in the rear, he is running different gear ratios to compensate.

I notice people tend to have a habit of saying I change the rear end ratio to ___ when they specifically mean both ends, for some reason people just refer to it as a "rear end ratio" I'm pretty sure that's what the OP meant.

 

Nice feedback. glad you enjoy it. Going to larger tires regearing always helps.

Maybe 4.56s would of help will fuel mileage. But it wouldn't be as responsive.