--I dont know much about your type of racing, but this one thing I do know;Theres no sense in spending money on things not applicable to getting the job done.Ask yourself: How many gears do you need for the racing? Are you driving to/from the track? how many miles/time, and at what speed?ie; do you need a road gear? Do you bomb it around on non-race days? ie do you need city gears?The answers to these questions will, to a large extent determine, the number of gears you actually need, and their ratios. For instance if the car is dedicated to the track, you only need 2 or 1 gear.If you are driving to the track, you will need an additional gear.And if bombing around, you will need a filler to get from 4th to 2nd.Im pretty sure youve gone through this process, to come up with the tranny, as your solution.
--Heres where Im going; You can fit the geartrain to the engine, or you can fit the engine to the geartrain.
--The price of a specialty tranny, can buy a lot of power. But if its a wide powerband you need, you may not be able to move too far from your current combo.
--If your one and only problem is running out of power/revs in exactly one gear, it would be really hard to justify a tranny swap. At least for me it would be.
--If the machine was a dedicated track only car, would it work to re-gear the back to run the race in 2nd? Heres the formula; (TC x RPM)/(1056 x R1 x R2) = mph
Where; TC= tire circumference, RPM = engine revs, R1 = diff ratio, and R2 = trans ratio
The math;............ (84 x 5400)/(1056 x 3.09 x 2.94) = 47 mph Is this close?
Then to use 2nd; ...(84 x 5400)/(1056 x 1.67 x 5.13) = 50 mph
or.........................(84 x 5200)/(1056 x 1.67 x 4.89) = 51 mph
This rear end swap gets you 2 gears for the race, well you would probably only use 1st off the line,And then the O/D, will drop the 4.89s to 3.55 equivalent for the highway.
--Alternatively, you could pop in a cam kit, 1 or2 or maybe 3 sizes bigger. this would tighten up the powerband and extend the operating rpm. This would allow you to keep all the geartrain that you already have. Bigger cams tend to trade hp up top for tq down low. If you need that tq , a cam swap might not be the answer.I say might because the 360 has plenty of tq down low already, and you are probably never there very long anyway. An extra 20 hp up top, and a few hundred more rpm, might be the ticket.
--Anyway, talk is cheap, so, all the best to you what ever you decide.
