On my 59 1 ton I have the bed off and the truck on jack stands so I decided to do the trick to count the times the drive shaft rotated versus a rear wheel to see what the ratio was. I really didn't want to run with what should be the stock ration of 5.14 (according to my books).
I took a marksalot and put arrows on the drive shaft and on the brake drum for reference so I could count revlutions easier. I have the 8 lug floating axle (like in Jerry's previous post). To measure it I put a 1/4 steel plate on one side in the lugs braced against the driveway so one wheel wouldn't turn and then went both backward and forward turning both the driveshaft and the wheel by hand.
The reason for all that testing is that the drive shaft doesn't quite make 3 rotations for the the 1 rotation of the brake drum!!!
So question is - did they really have gearing as high as that in these rears? Did I get really lucky??? I am going to ax the original owner about it and see if he remembers changing it. Would be a score if he did. The truck was last inspected in 1975, and it was regularly used, so maybe they upped the gearing or swapped for a rear end that would be more practical on the highway.
Or am i ignorant and doing the test wrong?
