There is an easyer way to do this, or it seamed easyer to me. First jack
up the car by the rear axle and support it on jack stands. Put the car
into neutral. With chalk or tape, mark the tire on the bottom. Crawl
under the car and spin the drive shaft, keeping track how many times it
goes around, once the wheels have made a compleat revolition, the number
of times the drive shaft spun is your axle ratio, i.e., spun drive shaft
about 4.2 time then diff. is 4.22:1. When doing this make sure the two
wheels spin at the same rate (together).
On Thu, 15 Jun 1995 TEdlund(at)aol.com wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 14 Darryl Coppenhaver wrote:
>
> >So how do I tell me gear ratio any-way?
>
> The author of the article I mentioned (printed in the Sunbeam Alpine Owners
> Club Members Handbook) anticipated this question and included a method to
> determine the differential ratio. Here goes:
>
> "To check which differential your Alpine is actually fitted with, jack up one
> rear wheel (chock the other one well), put the car in top gear and use the
> starting handle to bring the engine to top-dead-center (watch the timing
> marks). Now mark the bottom center of the tire whilst holding the wheel back
> against transmission backlash. Turn the engine over two complete turns to
> exactly T.D.C. again and, holding the wheel back against the backlash once
> more, see how far the wheel has rotated.
>
> If you have a 3.89:1 differential the wheel should have done just over one
> complete turn and if you have a 4.22:1 differential it should have done less
> than one turn. The exact angles for these differentials and others that can
> be fitted to Alpines are listed below.
>
> Differential Ratio Wheel Rotation
> 4.86:1 296x
> 4.78:1 301x
> 4.55:1 316x
> 4.44:1 324x
> 4.22:1 341x
> 3.89:1 370x
> 3.70:1 389x"
>
> I have not yet tried this myself, but I do have a starting handle. However,
> I tried to hook it up one day and it doesn't line up with the crankshaft
> pully. I think the bumper or valence was in the way.
>
> If you try this I would be interested in the results.
>
> Terry Edlund
> San Diego, CA
> B395009965
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:14:58 CDT