Butters "Winter Upgrades". . Starting a Little Early
Gear ratios were one reason I went with the T56 when I did my swap. I liked the ratio spreads on my old 833 4 speed and a lot of the other modern options I was looking at had really weird spreads to me. Either stuff like a really short first gear (something silly like 6:1 that wouldn't even make it across an intersection before needing to shift followed up by a 2:1 second or something like that), or very little difference between some gears and inconsistent rpm drops. I was looking at stuff like the TKO, T5, T56, Passon 5 speed, etc (this was also 10+ years ago). I also specifically wanted the Viper T56 because I wanted the 0.5:1 6th gear. That was a problem with a lot of the other overdrive transmissions as well, the top gear was barely even an overdrive. I think some weren't much more than 0.96:1 or 0.85:1 or something like that. Not enough to make a difference in my book. The Viper spec T56 was basically an 833 with 2 extra gears and had really nice consistent rpm drops between each gear. With autos and a lot more gears to play with I don't think the ratios are quite as easy to compare. With a manual I didn't want to be shifting back and forth all the time trying to find which gear I wanted.