The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Determining which gears are in my rear end? '48 1.5ton

What is the easiest way to determine which gear set is in my '48 1.5ton Loadmaster RK4400? The operators manual says it is either 6.17 or 5.43.

The above link is good yet perhaps confusing. Basically you can jack up one rear wheel, turn it a few times, count how many turns the driveshaft makes, and do some math.

In only a few words:
A good and accurate way to do that is to turn the driveshaft 20 turns, let only one wheel turn and count the turns(assuming open differential/no locker). Now 10 divided by number of wheel turns is your ratio.

Your 48 1.5 ton has a normal open diferential, so that method works nicely.

To further explain why this works is because the differential gears throw in a factor of 2. So we used 20 turns and calculated with 10 because 20/2=10, so that accounts for the action of the differential when you only had one wheel turning.

I think they used something like a 6:17 to 1 ratio.

John

I appreciate all of the responses, looks like I am jacking up the rear end and counting rotations soon!