My solution to excessive highway rpm

The truck is a blast to drive but highway RPMs are high. I've looked at Gear Vendor units but never could find a used one for a reasonable price, then I found this:





It's a Mitchell 3500D Gear Splitter which offers a 22.8% underdrive. These stopped being built around the mid 90's but I got this unit for a good price and it's in geat shape. An overdrive would have been better but I'll make this work. I'll run 3:25 gears for (High) 1:1 highway gearing and when in low I'll basically get back my 4:11s for performance. So more fab work and parts to replace

That sure looks like a heavy duty unit! One of my p/u's was used for some hard towing several years ago and I needed a bit of lower gearing for the job. I just keep changing the ring & pinion until I reached an acceptable engine speed at the speed I could tow safely. Although my p/u used one of the heavier Ford 9" assemblies, I ended with a 2.75:1 ratio and did the towing in second (C6) gear, which put my actual final drive at 3.9:1, excluding tire diameter. It worked great that way. When the towing was done, shift into D and be on my way!

Happy Motoring,
Dave.

They had two models, the 2500 & 3500. The 3500 is definately overkill for a pickup but I should be able to run it without worries of breakage. I live in the middle of nowhere so any track time or cruise night/car show is hours away, to get the highway rpms down for trips an overdrive was a necessity.