3:73 to 4:10 cost

[Tominator223]

I paid $1000.00 on a 2wd. To do all bearings & new ring & pinion. Stock 3:55. Couple years back. (This was at a performance rear end shop ). Now I don’t know the tire size you run. However you might go to a different tire size & get the results you’re looking for .

 

[dwade]

Cheaper in the short run.... I've got a 1500 4x4 with 3:22 gears and when I pull my TT (7k lbs) I swap the stock tires (31.6" tall) with 29" tires which changes my gear ration to 3:55 which makes pulling the TT much easier. Driving through the hills of southern Indiana was a breeze and only dropped into 5th gear (6 spd trans) on the steeper hills.

 

[PJ Snyder]

4x4 or 2wd ?

3k is way too much for just the rear that is why I am asking if it's a 4x4 ... if it's a 2wd you only have to do the rears and even then to go from 3.73 to 4.10 it's not even worth the money ... any particular reason you want to go to 4.10s ?

The 4.10 option is only $ 145 from the factory.

 

[CheechDogg.0n37s]

The 4.10 option is only $ 145 from the factory.

He's not asking about the factory option ... he wants to regear now ..

 

[JerryETX]

Well guys I've gotten 2 estimates on going from 3:73 to either 4:10 or 4:30 and one was $3900 and the other was $4400. That's not worth it to me. With the auto market starting to change in favor of the consumer I'm going to hold off and see what happens over the coming months.

 

[CheechDogg.0n37s]

Well guys I've gotten 2 estimates on going from 3:73 to either 4:10 or 4:30 and one was $3900 and the other was $4400. That's not worth it to me. With the auto market starting to change in favor of the consumer I'm going to hold off and see what happens over the coming months.

Good decision homie seriously ...

 

[dhay13]

Well guys I've gotten 2 estimates on going from 3:73 to either 4:10 or 4:30 and one was $3900 and the other was $4400. That's not worth it to me. With the auto market starting to change in favor of the consumer I'm going to hold off and see what happens over the coming months.

I think that's best. I'm in the camp that that small of a change isn't worth the $$$. If mine had 3.73's then I would have lived with it but luckily mine had the 4.10's. The 3.73's weren't a deal breaker if that's what mine had.

 

[GsRAM]

Great call, 4k for both axles...no way, not worth it in my opinion...especially for thr .limited amount of times i believe you said you do each year.

When I had my TT that was 7 total, not much in the grand scheme of things.

 

[22hemi13]

I went 5:13 gear from 3:73. 1k for front and rear gears plus a front arb locker. And about $2,00-3,000 for labor. Don’t do a cheap shop find a GREAT shop. Ask me how I know!

 

[Toddz]

For those prices I wouldn't have done it either. I would have just stayed with the 3.73.

 

[MetalGrand]

I have a RAM 2500 4X4 6.4 Hemi.

Original gearing was 3.73 and I went to 4.56. I paid $1,800 for parts and labor.

 

[Moose2]

Dang, I went from 3:42 to 4:10’s…..it cost me about $25 grand! But they gave me a new truck with the gears.

 

[JerryETX]

I have a RAM 2500 4X4 6.4 Hemi.

Original gearing was 3.73 and I went to 4.56. I paid $1,800 for parts and labor.

What type of non towing driving do you do (mostly city or mix)? What did going from 3:73 to 4:56 do to your mpg?

 

[EastWestHemi]

i have been towing 14-17,000 lbs with my 6.4 with 4.10s. Gravel pit operators are terrible at gauging 3 yards and constantly give me 4+ yards, each yard is 2800lbs. My gooseneck dump is 5,100 lbs. The truck and engine feel fine even overloaded, transmission on the longer hills creeps up the 175 degrees, my trip is only 12 miles round trip through. I wasn’t beating on it, no traffic and no time crunch, even lugged some hills at low rpm going 10 mph. The one time they loaded me with 7,000 lbs + 5100 trailer— it felt fantastic. Truck handled 11,000 lb awesome. At 15-16,000 lbs a higher gear would definitely help the tranny not work so hard. I never even entertained a 3.73 gear truck, luckily when I bought mine they had hundreds in the lot and you could get one in any combination you desired….. and at a $9,000 discount. Still kick myself I didn’t splurge and get the diesel version for $45k. Far cry from today’s mess.

 

[62Blazer]

From my experience there is a very small difference between 3.73 and 4.10 geared trucks. When I was just learning trucks and didn't know any better I had my personal truck swapped from 3.73 to 4.10 gears to handle the larger tires.....remember picking up the truck from the shop and being very disappointed as there was very little difference. Later in life at my previous job I actually did a lot of powertrain testing for Chrysler/Ram/Dodge/Fiat/Daimler Benz/etc... and therefore drove a lot of trucks back to back that had both the factory available 3.73 or 4.10 gears. If you covered up the tach it was very hard to tell the difference between the trucks, and even if you could watch the tach it could be hard to see the difference. At 65 mph you are looking at around a 150 RPM difference between those gears which you would have to look at closely to really see the difference on the tach.
Overall I think many people way over exaggerate the real difference in small gear steps like that. If you really want to feel the difference I would recommend going from 3.73 to at least 4.56. However I do understand the concern for people who are doing the gear swap for towing but only tow a few times a year and don't want to lose fuel mileage. A lot of that depends on what your normal drive is. If you spend a lot of time on the freeway going 65+ mph than a concern, but if most of your driving is stop and go around town, or slower speed back roads there shouldn't be much of a concern.

 

[JerryETX]

From my experience there is a very small difference between 3.73 and 4.10 geared trucks. When I was just learning trucks and didn't know any better I had my personal truck swapped from 3.73 to 4.10 gears to handle the larger tires.....remember picking up the truck from the shop and being very disappointed as there was very little difference. Later in life at my previous job I actually did a lot of powertrain testing for Chrysler/Ram/Dodge/Fiat/Daimler Benz/etc... and therefore drove a lot of trucks back to back that had both the factory available 3.73 or 4.10 gears. If you covered up the tach it was very hard to tell the difference between the trucks, and even if you could watch the tach it could be hard to see the difference. At 65 mph you are looking at around a 150 RPM difference between those gears which you would have to look at closely to really see the difference on the tach.
Overall I think many people way over exaggerate the real difference in small gear steps like that. If you really want to feel the difference I would recommend going from 3.73 to at least 4.56. However I do understand the concern for people who are doing the gear swap for towing but only tow a few times a year and don't want to lose fuel mileage. A lot of that depends on what your normal drive is. If you spend a lot of time on the freeway going 65+ mph than a concern, but if most of your driving is stop and go around town, or slower speed back roads there shouldn't be much of a concern.

Fair points. I decided against making the swap due to cost. Yeah 4 grand is cheaper than buying another used truck but it's also money I'll never recoup when I do decide to sell this one. And that cost was going to 4:10 or 4:30.

I've heard several people say there's not much of a difference in real world. Curious how Ram shows an almost 20% increase is max towing weight between 3:73 and 4:10. That's pretty substantial.

I do drive more highway than in town. Currently I can get about 14 mpg driving between 70 and 75 on the highway. That's hand calculated. Can't trust the computer. Just last weekend drive 200 miles and babied the pedal the whole way (no hills to speak of). Got 14.4 and truck showed 16.8. I've never found it to be closer than 1.5 mpg to actual. If I switched to 4:30 or lower I'm pretty sure I'd be looking at 11 mpg highway running between 70 and 75 (or worse) and that's a deal killer for me.

 

[HEMIMANN]

There is a small difference in axle gear ratios with the ZF 8 speed transmission - but not with the previous Chrysler 66RFE transmission, which I have. Many of us stuck with the standard 3.73 axle wish for the 4.10 axle, but the conversion is expensive, so we live with it and tow-tune, restricting to 5th trans gear (a mild overdrive gear), some even lock to 4th gear, and with MDS off, so not transmission hunting and slamming.

 

[GsRAM]

From my experience there is a very small difference between 3.73 and 4.10 geared trucks. When I was just learning trucks and didn't know any better I had my personal truck swapped from 3.73 to 4.10 gears to handle the larger tires.....remember picking up the truck from the shop and being very disappointed as there was very little difference. Later in life at my previous job I actually did a lot of powertrain testing for Chrysler/Ram/Dodge/Fiat/Daimler Benz/etc... and therefore drove a lot of trucks back to back that had both the factory available 3.73 or 4.10 gears. If you covered up the tach it was very hard to tell the difference between the trucks, and even if you could watch the tach it could be hard to see the difference. At 65 mph you are looking at around a 150 RPM difference between those gears which you would have to look at closely to really see the difference on the tach.
Overall I think many people way over exaggerate the real difference in small gear steps like that. If you really want to feel the difference I would recommend going from 3.73 to at least 4.56. However I do understand the concern for people who are doing the gear swap for towing but only tow a few times a year and don't want to lose fuel mileage. A lot of that depends on what your normal drive is. If you spend a lot of time on the freeway going 65+ mph than a concern, but if most of your driving is stop and go around town, or slower speed back roads there shouldn't be much of a concern.

Thanks for this blazer and reinforcing what I was trying to get across in my initial post,. When I see these 3.73 to 4.10 posts come up every so often I hope the OP hears us and dosen't make a 3k plus mistake.

In the mustang world, the above swap would be like going from a 2.73 to a 3.08 gear, also not worth it, same reasons. I can do the work myself and from a performance aspect it still wouldn't be worth it. Too small of a difference.

Why the 2k bump in towing performance I can't say. I test drove a 3.73 and a 4.10 geared truck back to back when I was looking. I felt no difference at all, so I bought the 73 truck because it was the color/options I wanted.

 

[Dean2]

From my experience there is a very small difference between 3.73 and 4.10 geared trucks. When I was just learning trucks and didn't know any better I had my personal truck swapped from 3.73 to 4.10 gears to handle the larger tires.....remember picking up the truck from the shop and being very disappointed as there was very little difference. Later in life at my previous job I actually did a lot of powertrain testing for Chrysler/Ram/Dodge/Fiat/Daimler Benz/etc... and therefore drove a lot of trucks back to back that had both the factory available 3.73 or 4.10 gears. If you covered up the tach it was very hard to tell the difference between the trucks, and even if you could watch the tach it could be hard to see the difference. At 65 mph you are looking at around a 150 RPM difference between those gears which you would have to look at closely to really see the difference on the tach.
Overall I think many people way over exaggerate the real difference in small gear steps like that. If you really want to feel the difference I would recommend going from 3.73 to at least 4.56. However I do understand the concern for people who are doing the gear swap for towing but only tow a few times a year and don't want to lose fuel mileage. A lot of that depends on what your normal drive is. If you spend a lot of time on the freeway going 65+ mph than a concern, but if most of your driving is stop and go around town, or slower speed back roads there shouldn't be much of a concern.

SPOT on. Best advice on the thread. If you only tow occaisionally, put it in tow mode and set gear limit to 4th or 5th as required. Problem solved. That is specifically why those two functions exist.

 

[62Blazer]

Just to expand on my previous statements...
I'm not saying that 4.10 is not "better" than 3.73. If I was ordering a new truck, or was trying to choose between two trucks on a lot that were identical except for the gear ratio, I would get the 4.10. What I'm saying is that if I already had a truck with 3.73 I don't think it's worth the time or money to swap to 4.10. The difference between 3.73 and 4.10 (or other similar differences) is more like a "good" versus "best" situation, not a "good" versus "won't do it at all". Keep in mind that 4.10 is only a $145 option on a new truck, but as stated above can be $4,000 to have it changed on an existing truck.
The Ram website does state a 2,500 lb. increase in towing when you get the 4.10 option so goes along with it being "better" for towing....but also don't overstate what this is worth. 2,500 lbs. isn't exactly a huge amount when you are already talking about 14,000+ lbs. to start out with. Not like if you have a 3.73 truck it will tow 14k+ perfectly fine and adding 2,500 lbs. suddenly makes the truck explode and kill a bus full of nuns....but if you had 4.10 gears it is somehow magically fine.