Re: Who is running 4:10\'s ???
I have a neighbor who put in 4:10's and told me he didn't notice much difference, including the et slip from the drags. This sounds like it's probably right. People mix up "torque" and "horsepower". Horsepower is a true power measuement(force x distance). It has torque in the mix...hp = torque x rpm's divided by 5252 (the formula James Watt came up with for his steam engines). So...the key points are...
1. ONLY horsepower can accelerate a vehicle. Torque has no motion, so it cannot. However, people often use the term "torque" when they really mean a wide horsepower band.
2. When you put in the 4:10 gears, the car will feel more "torquey", but it doesn't change the horsepower output of the car...so...the only advantage you actually get is to utilize a little more of the car's horsepower within the span of the quarter mile.
My strong hunch is that, due to the fact that you're not adding horsepower with gears and based on my neighbor's experience, the lower gears will make only a very small (if any) improvement in quarter mile et. If you put on a pair of really sticky tires, there may be some improvement in et. Is this correct based on other Viper observations?
There are other considerations. You're making a 13.5% change in driveshaft speed, so you'll have similar error in the speedometer if you don't deal with that as well. The engine will sing along at higher rpm's, but there are so many gears in these things (I found SIX so far!), you can just clutch it & upshift.
