3.55 ring & pinion

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leblanc

leblanc

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I am looking at 3.55 gears for my 8.25 rear and I found these on Summit's site: ZOOM ring & pinion $189.95 9 ZZZ-C825-355
Richmond ring & pinion $159.95 RMG-CR825355
Superior Axle Gear $235.75 SAG-C825355 I looked at quite a few gear sites and so far Richmond gears are not recomended for quiet operation and on the Summit site Superior gears are the only ones that talked about being quiet. What do you guys think? My car will see only street use, no severe abuse. If you have a set I could buy cheap let me know.
 
I have a 8 1/4 s.g with new richmond 4.10,s for $200 plus shipping.Let me know?

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Gears that are loud,the only gears i ever had that were loud were loud because they were set up wrong..i have run Richmonds in a couple of different setups,and never had any noises with them..of those 3 choices you list i'd go with the Richmond...have you given Randys a call i know they use Yukon brand,but i've not heard anything bad about them yet...how about Mancinis they setup my 4.30's with spool for me,and all i can say is nice....by the way great last name!!!
 
I don't have much experience setting up gears but I'd suggest a call to a reputable differential parts dealer like Randy's. Summit is very un-reliable on their website info. I find errors there all the time. I swear they've got 10 year old kids running their website. Then again maybe 10 year olds would do better.:bootysha:
 
Hi. I just got off the phone with a buddy of mine who has a set of 3.55 gears, but sorry he doesn't want to sell at this time. I'll keep my ears open. Bobby
 
I just installed a set of Motive 3:55's in my 8-1/4" rear. I bought them on line from National Drivetrain. They were priced quite reasonable but were a tad touchy to set up. I can't comment on the noise as I just put the rear in the car and will have to get the driveshaft modded before I can drive it.

Building an 8-1/4" makes sense for a modestly powered car, should take up to 400hp no problem, definitely if it's behind an automatic. I ran a 7-1/4 behind my 360/904 combo for ten years with no problems. In fact the little 7-1/4 was installed on a fair amount of 273 hi-po cars from the factory with automatics if memory serves.

I have heard from more than one source about Richmonds being noisy too which scared me away from them, not saying it's true though, just my 2 cents. Yukon is a foreign made gear(china or Korea I think), so were my Motive's. Probably would not have bought them if I knew that but they looked very good coming out of the box. Richmond my be the only gear I looked at that was made in USA. I guess it doesn't really matter where they are made if they are good quality. There was one gear set that stated "not recommended for quiet running vehicles". Allot of the sets meant for off road vehicles(trucks,jeeps) say this. Don't know if it's because they are cheaply made or because it's a by product of making them indestructible. I wouldn't take them as a gift for a street car.

Edited in:
Here is a link for Randy's Ring and Pinion. Note how they say Richmond is not recommended for quiet running vehicles, says the same thing about USA Standard Gear(ZG part numbers, pretty sure those are zoom gears).
http://www.ringpinion.com/PartsList...Name=Rings+&+Pinions&CatType=Sub-Differential
 
I installed a set of Motive gears in my Cuda last year. First time I set up a 8-3/4. They seemed to be very touchy also. I really couldn't get the pattern like they showed on the paper. If I set the pinion depth right for the drive side the coast side pattern was way off. I did the best I could at finding a happy medium leaning more to the drive side since it's what takes torque. Since this was the first time I had ever done it I took them by a guys place that has set up numerous sets and he couldn't get them any closer either. I installed the 3rd member in the car and it's very noisy. Worse than the old gears I took out and I thought they were bad. I'm not happy with them at all but I got busy and never found the time to call them to see if they'd do anything about them. It's been too long to expect them to do anything about them now. I'd suggest if yours are noisy and you don't like it to contact them right away and see what they say.
 
That's similiar to what I went through except you got yours looking pretty darn good. Better than mine for sure. Nothing I did would get the pattern in the center of the drive and coast at the same time. I'm gonna pull it back apart next week to see how it looks and see if now that it has lapped in good maybe I might be able to touch it up and get it better. I put about 700 miles on it last summer so hopefully I didn't ruin them. If so I guess I need to start over.
 
To the best of my knowledge, only OEM gears are designed to offer quiet operation. I purchased an OEM gear set from Mancini for my 9.25 axle that's going my '71 Duster.
 
Ran my new Motive 3:55's this weekend, they were quiet, guess it's all in the set up(sometimes). They are less than $180.00/set too.
 
I would poke around your local Dodge dealers and truck forums.

There are a lot of guys who yank the 3.55s out of their Dakotas and replace them with 3.92s or 4.10s. I bought my set for $40 with 20K miles on them from a V6 Dakota.

Jeep Liberties and V6 Daks use 8.25 axles. Beware though...don't buy the whole center chunk unless you want to use custom axles. '97-up 8.25s use 29 spline carriers vs. the older 27 spline in everything else.
 
fishy68 said:
That's similiar to what I went through except you got yours looking pretty darn good. Better than mine for sure. Nothing I did would get the pattern in the center of the drive and coast at the same time. I'm gonna pull it back apart next week to see how it looks and see if now that it has lapped in good maybe I might be able to touch it up and get it better. I put about 700 miles on it last summer so hopefully I didn't ruin them. If so I guess I need to start over.
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Fishy, my rear is not totally silent either, has a slight whine in decel, nothing terrible but it is definitely not perfectly quiet after putting 100 miles on it I detected some noise in the 48-40 decel(complete lift of throttle). Nothing I can't live with, none of them will be silent in a Duster anyway:)

I did contact the manufacturer again and they said there are two different qualities of gears: Blue and white box(mine and yours) and ones that come in a yellow/red box(premium gears). They only offer their "standard quality" gears for mopar 8-1/4" and most others. National Drivetrain, a heavy supplier of Motive gears even has a standard quality line called platinum and they say those will make some noise but may get quieter as they run in. Hard to believe they would list them like that. I suspect those are made by motive also but can't say for sure.

I suspect our gears finish lapping themselves as they run in. Proabably possible to pull the cover and run a pattern after initial run in and touch them up a little if you don't like the pattern. I bet the backlash opens up on them after run in which can give you some noise too.

Further, motive is a division of Midwestern Truck and Auto parts, there is a separate Motive Performance division which makes most likely the better quality gears. Our gears were made in Korea on top of that. Not knocking them because they are foreign, I had a 2000 Elantra that was the benchmark of reliable and it did not have noisy gears. I suspect the standard Motive gears are more suitable for offroad trucks which is where I have seen allot of their stuff marketed. Hind site is always 20-20....

I looked at your post from last year and saw what you went through on set up, about the same as mine. Some gear sets are going to have some noise and I think these are one of them. Neither one of our sets would allow drive and coast to set up at optimum, one had to sacrifice for the other. Mine are still not much worse than my stock gears in my 06 GTO. I noticed taking my goat out of overdrive makes the gears noiser on decel too because the engine puts more load on the coast side of the gears in the lower drive ranges. My Duster of coarse has a 904 in it with no overdrive. I think a liberal dose of Dyna-mat is in order!

National drivetrain lists the different catergories of Motive gears, I suspect their Platinum Torque line is made by Motive also. Here is the link, good read:
http://www.nationaldrivetrain.com/ring_pinion_info/basic_overview.html
 
I have Motive gears in my truck for over two years now.... no whine or problems but the Auburn carrier went bad. It didn't have a bunch of miles on it either. Don't buy Aubrun!
 
Tnx for the info GoldDuster. I didn't know they had 2 different levels. Never saw anything except what I have advertised. I just picked up a real nice used set of factory 3.55's I'm going to put in a 489 case I have and put them in. About the same time I'll be putting in a stout 408 so I won't really need the lower gears anyway. Your probably right about them lapping in after you drive them some. When I pull mine back apart I'll check them and see if I can get them better. You know the funny thing is when I set mine up I set them up favoring the drive side thinking that would be best and it's only while cruising at 45-55 mph that it's noisy. Even though the coast side was off more than the drive side it's completely quite while coasting down. Go figure! I'm also installing some dynamat in the rear hatch area to help keep it quieter. LOL

I'm kinda surprised to hear your GTO has some gear noise. Usually new stuff is without noise. Guess it's cause it has perf. gears in it.
 
mullinax95 said:
I have Motive gears in my truck for over two years now.... no whine or problems but the Auburn carrier went bad. It didn't have a bunch of miles on it either. Don't buy Aubrun!
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I bet mine would be quiet too if they were in a truck. The cab is alot more isolated from the rear than my tin canny Duster with spacesaver pak. That would be interesting comparison if someone could take a slightly noisy rear out of a car and put it in a truck and see if anybody could hear the noise afterwards.
 
goldduster360 said:
I bet mine would be quiet too if they were in a truck. The cab is alot more isolated from the rear than my tin canny Duster with spacesaver pak. That would be interesting comparison if someone could take a slightly noisy rear out of a car and put it in a truck and see if anybody could hear the noise afterwards.
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It more than likely could be that guy that installed them has just retired from mechanic work for over 40 something years. He traveling now in a big *** camper. He was good... everyone is not sure who to take their cars to now.
 
I took the Duster on a 160 mile round trip this weekend. Met up with some fellow gearheads in Lake Wales who have each done several rear end set ups. We took it for a drive and I asked them to listen to the noise, each one of them replied: What Noise? The guy in the back seat said he could not hear anything. Cool.

I did notice after driving it for nearly an hour the slight whine I could hear on decel had silenced somewhat. Maybe they do silence a bit during run in.

On the way back feeling confident they were run in pretty good I did a few 65-90 blasts with it. I let it coast down pretty abruptly after reaching 90. I swear this thing seemed even quieter after that. Gears have maybe 280 miles on them now. Got to run the car at 60mph average for a over an hour at a time on this trip.

I do seem to have a knack to zero in on the slightest imperfection maybe I am just too picky.
 
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