After being inspired by rattlewagon and yoder519 I'm planning on some 35s for my currently bone stock '91 pickup. No lift-probably just ball joint spacers up front and 14" ZUK springs in the rear. That and a whole lot of pinch weld pounding and sawzalling The thing I can't decide on is gears. I've read plenty of talk on here about how 5.71s are weak, 4.88s aren't low enough, etc... So if you've got a 22RE/5 speed pickup and 35s what gears are you running right now? Do you like them? Are they too high/too low? Just looking for some real world experience on this. I should add that I'm not looking to rock crawl, just to do some average trails with some rocks, ruts, and mud, haul firewood, and get me to work on bad weather days.

 

Most people run 5.29 with there 35's.

 

X2 on 5.29's. Big tires little motor. You want to run in your power range for best results.

 

So 5.71s would put me too far outside of the power range? I just wonder about having more gear to turn the heavy tires. I'm probably going to go with one of Marlin's clutch kits (1600lb) too.

 

Its a tough call. I just had this discussion with another member via PM and have this to offer. I've been running 35's with 5.29s for a while now. I have found that I run a little slow on my speedo (i.e. 65 on the speedo is actually 62 on the GPS) I also lose 1 mile on the ODO for every 20 miles traveled (i.e. 200 miles on the odo is actually 210 miles on the GPS) I'm thinking that 37s might make all of that dead on, or that 4.88s would make it close. That said, I still need 3rd gear on long uphill climbs and the truck is generally a bit of a dog with the 5.29s, so I imagine the 4.88s would be tedious. I can do 75 to 80 on flat ground or downhill but as mentioned, uphill climbs are still a struggle. Then again, when I'm just cruising along the highway, I wouldn't mind at all if the rpm's were 3 or 4 hundred lower but... IMO you don't need 5.71s. I'd be curious to see how 4.88s work out for someone.

From a totally self serving standpoint, I just flopped my truck on its side and will be parting it out so if you want a 5.29 diff... I will have a couple available in the near future.

 

Its called a cumulative error. If its off allittle at 20mph its off a lot at 70mph.

 

I think those 5.71's are only intended for auto's with big tires. Ive heard there pretty weak due to the lack of teeth in contact with the ring gear.

 

With 4.88s and 35s my speedo was dead on. Honestly it felt better than 31s and 4.10s. I wouldnt hesitate to do it again. That being said I did go back to 33x10.5s because I was DDing the truck a lot of miles and wanted the better mileage from a narrow tire.

 

well i know my buddy has an 86 22re, SAS with 5.29s lockers and 36 super swampers over inflated to about 75 psi and his speedo is perfect and it drives like a stock truck

 

Lots of good testimonials here-thanks! A lot of it is going to come down to money. I need to make this truck more capable, but I just don't have tons of cash to drop on it. The more I think about it the more 4.88s make sense simply because I can probably find a set in a pick-a-part and install them myself which would save a lot of money over 5.29s. SCToy makes an interesting point about the truck feeling close to stock with 4.88s and 35s-there's only 37 RPM difference. Still, even he decided to go back to not only 33s but 33x10.5s, but only because he was DD'ing it. Maybe if I find a set of 4.88s and a cheap pair of 35s (Gotta go used-no $$$ for new ones) I'll try them. The truck will be spending most of its time in 4HI/4LO and no higher than 3rd gear if it even gets there. Once I'm out of the woods it's not a long ride back to the house and there aren't any hills. Taking it hunting would be a different story because I usually head up to the higher elevations, but if I have to jam it down into 3rd to make it up a 6% grade I could live with that. I should add that it is going to need a head so I'm going to do the Engbldr 261C cam while I'm in there.

 

eh who needs gears. i been running 4.10s with 31s, 33s, and 35s. little slow but it does just fine. that said im going to 5.29s for my 37s

 

If I was just wheeling it maybe, but I'd probably kill my clutch in short order trying to haul any kind of load with 35s (or 33s) and 4.10s.

*EDIT*

I did a little experiment. I don't have a tach in my truck so I took my current tires (29"), gearing (4.10), plugged in the 5th gear ratio, and the fastest I've ever gone in the truck (about 85 MPH) and came up with about 3500 RPM. I used 4.88 gearing, 33" tires, and plugged in each ratio from 1st to 5th and came up with the following speeds at 3500 RPM:

1st - 18 MPH

2nd - 33 MPH

3rd - 51 MPH

4th - 70 MPH

5th - 83 MPH

That all sounds pretty doable on the highway, especially with the Engbldr 261C cam.

 

I have run both 5.29 and 4.88 on different rigs. I preferred the 5.29 when I only had 1 t-case and the 4.88 when I had 2.

 

Forgot something - for about $80 you can get the speedo recalibration boxes to dial in the speedo.

 

I am currently running 5.29 with dual cases. I have been considering going to 4.88; sometime I feel like I am "between" gears, like I need a third-and-a-half. You encounter this? Not as low, but less rowing is my thinking.