Ring and Pinion: Let’s Get All Up In That Axle
Ring and Pinion: Let’s Get All Up In That Axle
Let’s get technical. There comes a time in an individual’s life that they put too big of a wheel and tire on their truck, Jeep or SUV and it robs the engine of its power and turns the vehicle into a giant turd. Shall we explore how to remedy this?
Inside of a vehicle’s axle assembly is a magical setup that I am about to do a piss poor job of explaining. I’m going to start with the driveshaft as it is what transfers the power from the transmission to the axle and you’ve probably seen one and can point at it and go, that’s a driveshaft. The driveshaft is connected to the pinion gear and as it spins it makes the ring gear spin in turn. The ring gear is attached to the carrier which is also what the axles are attached to so when the ring gear and carrier rotate that rotates the axles which makes the wheel and tire spin. This is all a classic case of leg bone connected to the hip bone basically. Why am I telling you this? Well when Mr. Mopar built your Jeep Gladiator, he built it with certain specs in mind. Specs that balance the engine’s ability to get its power all the way to the pavement by having the transmission and gear ratio in the axle match up to the tire height put on at the factory. Super interesting right? So the short version of all this is that when a big ass tire is put on a Jeep or truck or whatever, the engine says, hey man, what the hell? I can only spin so fast. I need some help taking a load off. Can you help a brotha out? And of course, you’re like, well hell yes fam, I need some fuel mileage back because this ish cray, ya feel me?
It is at this point that we would perform a ring and pinion swap, or install gears as some folks refer to the procedure. Ya see, what happens is we open up your axle and get in there nice and deep like. We remove the factory ring and pinion and install a set with a different ratio. The ratio is the number of teeth on the ring gear divided by the number of teeth on the pinion gear. So, if the ring gear has 37 teeth and the pinion has 9 teeth, the ratio is 4.11:1. That also means that for every one turn of the ring gear, the pinion will turn 4.11 times. According to the internet, the purpose of the ring and pinion gears is to multiply the power delivered by the engine and transmission. So as the wheel and tire size and weight increases, the engine and trans need some help distributing its power and we do that by swapping gears. Great googly moogly.
The result of this upgrade is that it returns the power and fuel economy to the vehicle so you actually like driving it. It is important to go with the proper gear ratio though. For if you so choose the improper setup, your vehicle will forsake you and drive like it’s possessed by an automotive demon that wants nothing more than for you to question your reality. It won’t shift correctly, the power will not be properly distributed and you’ll be mad. I don’t want you to be mad. I want you to be happy. Euphoric even. I want you to bathe in the glow of your modified vehicle and draw energy from your majestic steed that motivates you to further lower your bank balance in search of more and more awesome shit for your truck, Jeep or SUV. You will also need an aftermarket programmer/tuner so you can communicate to your vehicle that some very important parameters have been adjusted. This is just part of the whole deal when it comes to adjusting tire sizes and ring and pinion ratios. And they can help unlock some ponies hiding under the hood with what we will refer to as sorcery. It’s pretty neat.
We also perform repairs on differentials. Rear end repairs if you will, even though we fix front differentials as well. If you have an issue with your driveline you will know it pretty much immediately because it’s not a noise that goes away. Ring gears don’t grow back teeth. Avert your eyes if you have a weak stomach because the picture below is graphic. But, if you have a situation like this we can get like Carrie Underwood and undo it.
Here’s another look because I’m a sick bastard.
Of course there are many and more intricacies when it comes to digging into peoples axles. We won’t get into all of those things so here’s a video from the before times that does an excellent job explaining the wizardry of spider gears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
So there you have it ladies and gentleman, ring and pinion stuff. Regardless of my buffoonery in poorly explaining this concept, we here at Off-Road King have years of experience on this subject. If you feel the need for us to get elbow deep in your axle, give us a holler and we would be more than happy to oblige. We’ll even use lube. K love you bye.