so after reading some positive psts as well as some negative i was just wondering if there is any upgrades as to gearing and final drive for the ecotec manual trans? id like gearing alot similar to the cobalt ss/tc.. i know the inserts and lsd options.. but not any info about changing the gearing..
I've not seen anyone do this yet on here, but I've been throwing the idea around in my head of picking up a spare f23 for a jbody and an f23 out of an "xfe" cobalt as the fdr is taller than our gearing so you'd have longer gears for us to run out before shifting. I know with my blower 1st was useless and 2nd was depending on conditions. I planned on just swapping the guts from one trans into the other and correcting the speedo via hpt.
Maybe some others will post up with more useful info than I since I've not tried this yet.
Honestly the difference between the two is negligible. My buddy's stock F23 in his Cobalt puked out, and we threw in an XFE trans. Very little noticable difference.
Currently #4 in Ecotec Forced Induction horsepower ratings. 505.8 WHP 414WTQ!!!
Currently 3rd quickest Ecotec on the .org - 10.949 @ 131.50 MPH!!!
fetter looked into it at one point... he has quite a few numbers on it.
Roofy, do you know how many more mph out of each gear he was getting? Plus wouldn't it put slightly more load on the motor from the gearing change?
Vince- I might shoot him some messages via fb after my car is tuned and drivable with all the turbo goodies. I'm almost to 100k on the stock trans and everything is still smooth as silk so I'll be keeping it for now.
I do not understand why you guys would want to run taller gears, our gears are already long compared to other sport compacts.
My buddy has a SS/TC with the factory 3.82 FDR(IIRC) gearing and then the trans blew, he swapped it out for a GM Koni Challenge trans with a 4.45 final drive and it was awesome.
He was making ~350whp and ~410wtq and while he had some traction issues in first and second on the street...it was an animal in 3rd or on the strip with drag slicks on.
The fastest stock turbo SS/TC on CobaltSS runs a 4.45 FDR trans and runs in the 11's.
I still have all the part numbers to swap to a 4.41 FDR out of the saturn vue...maybe one day I'll pull the trigger and order them.
