I'm building a Buggy which I assume will weigh in about 1500 pounds when complete. I want to run a 29 x 10.50 tire with with a Fuel Injected EA82 engine, 3.90 gears, and a D/R trans. This buggy is strictly for off-road use and will always be trailored. It's purpose is for moderate level trail stuff mostly family stuff with some moderate hill climbing. What I would like to know is if I ignored the high range, locked it in low range and made that my primary drive, what size tire could I run and keep the power roughly the same as if I had stock tire size in High Range. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me, I hope I didn't confuse anyone.

 

Jer

With that size tire and stock gears you'll be using 1st Gear + Lo Range about 90% of the time. You'll still need momentum to make most things; it wont be a "crawler".

Yeah, for what you describe I reckon locked in low will be fine. Theres always 4 more gears other then 1st to use. You will not be able to do really hard stuff softly, but it should be ok.

I would figure out the gearing for you, but all the gear ratios are on here somewhere and its just a small bit of math.

If you want any sort of acceptable gearing you're going to have to get a real transfercase. The samurai is a good canidate because it's a divorced transfer case, it's relitively small, and you can get 4:1 and even 6:1 lo range upgrades right off the shelf or even second hand now.

 

I was actually impressed with how well McBrat's red BRAT worked with 27" swampers and a locked rear end. Might want to go that route if you want to retain your gearing and still be capable. Keep the bottom real flat so you can just slide over everything

Thanks guys that is kind of my problem, the same problem everyone has gearing, for some reason I hate the idea of adding a tcase even though it solves most of my problems. But it's big and heavy and I have alot of fab work to do to try and cram it high enough not to hurt my ground clearance. Then I have to lengthen my buggy to accomidate the monster. I was hoping just to get away with a fabricated lower control arms with 720 hubs and some custom axles up front giving my Lock in Lock out Hubs. I was thinking a set of 27 ATV tires would look pretty good.

 

Jer

1500lbs + EFI = Dont worry about gearing.

 

You wont be slow, but you can't be stopped.

 

-Brian

I am going to regear to 4.44 just you wait and see