Tranny + Cam+gear questions.

[justindwright]

I have a 3.27 1 legger in my mark vii, It is stock other than 2.25 exhaust w/ some hy-po mufflers and a k&n airfilter. It has 167,000 miles on it. Should i get a b&m shift kit, and a tranny cooler for the trans department, if so give me names of parts and how easy to do. Would it be worth it to put a meaty cam in a car that has 167,000 miles on it? Would a 3.73 gear make a difference for me???? and also should i convert to posi? Can an early ranger w/ a 8.8 rearend posi diff go into my mark easily>????

[Desert Stallion]

Try to answer in order...

I don't like the B&M kit, I'd go with either Bauman or TransGo. B&M tends to shift too hard for me in a street car. A tranny cooler is always a good idea, PermaCool, Summit, B&M, etc, all make good units, easy to install.

I would never put a cam in a stock motor. It's not worth it. The heads and intake could never see the potential of the cam. Also as I said in the "performance chips" post, an aftermarket cam will tend to move the power-producing RPM range up to levels that aren't seen during normal street driving, and also tend to cost driveability and economy for a daily driver.

Yes, gears are the best bang-for-the-buck mod you can make to any car. You will notice more acceleration improvement from shorter gears than just about anything else you can do to your car short of forced induction. I would convert to a TracLok while you're at it.

If you're talking about swapping a Ranger diff, and not the entire assembly, then yes you can. All 8.8" diffs are the same, barring the whole open/limited slip thing but as we're already talking about limited slips, I'll assume that's what he's looking at swapping, and can be interchanged between any 8.8" housing, just as any 7.5" will swap into any 7.5" housing. You have to figure out if you have an 8.8" or 7.5". Limited slips are available for both, but if you are looking at making any power I would reccomend having an 8.8" diff. If you don't, find a Mark with the 8.8" and swap the entire assembly.

As for the install being easy, if you've never done one before I would either get help from someone who has done it before, take it to a shop, or hang around a shop for a month that does those installs and see what they do, then get a friend who's done it before to help. It's not that it's difficult to do, but it does require that you set tolerances very meticulously, and if they're off by as little as a couple thousandths of an inch, you can kiss your new gears goodbye in a matter of miles.

Hope that helps.