I know this has been beat to death. I just want other opinons.

I want a GT but I cant dedide on gears. Right now I am leaning to 3.55 gears. I change my mind daily and waffle back and forth. I just dont know what to get. I have beat myself up about this. I dont race on the street and my car will see limited track time. The only exception to this is when a ricer with a fart can pulls up next to me. I will peel the paint off of them in a hurry. I hate wings and fart cans. I will cut the Mustang loose as I do now in my Mach 1. I hate ricers.

I have *****ed for years about Ford not giving us options and now that they have I am in a state of confusion. Thank you Ford. I am beat down thinking about this. Its very confusing in a way. Somebody went 12.77 with 3.31 gears and Evan Smith only got 12.69 with 3.73 and we know he can drive. I just dont know what to do. I like to take long triips so cruising rpm is imprortant. MPG is also important. How much difference is there in the real world? Nobody knows right now.

I cruse the back roads also and like to use high gear. I am confused and upset about this like you cannot believe. I am a Mustang guy and passionate but I want to get it right when it comes time to order. Sorry for the long post but this is very important and I think others will appreciate it as well. I want all opinions.

 

I think 3.55 will be a good middleground between 3..31 and 3.73.

 

I plan to do a lot of daily driving in my 11 GT and I'm going with the 3.73's. From what other people have said or crunched numbers.. I heard it's not that big of a difference of gas mileage, but of course a lot of it depends on your style of driving.

 

My GT has 3.55's, my SVO has 3.73's. Get 3.73's. Not a huge difference, but a bit more exciting.

 

331.

 

3.73

 

4.56

 

I have the basic 3.31's in my 2010 GT, and they seem to fit my daily driving needs just fine. I have no experience with the other gears so can't really comment on that.

My thinking was that, since I don't plan on racing the car, a few tenths in the quarter don't really matter to me. I'd rather have the taller top gear (5th in my 2010, 6th in your 2011) for fuel economy on the highway. When I do have fun with the car, I can just stay in a lower gear; not a big deal to me.

 

IIRC, the gear ratios in the trans and the higher redline of the 5.0 make comparisons with past Mustangs not as helpful.

The good news is that it sounds like the car will be fast regardless of the gears...some speculate that with the 3.73s you will run out of 4th gear at the end of the 1/4 mile (and shifting obviously slows you down) plus 1st gear runs out extremely quickly. That said, the 3.73s will pull the hardest and will probably be the best for embarassing ricers.

I was set on the 3.73s until seeing these excellent 1/4 mile times even with the 3.31s..and since at least half of my miles will be highway, I changed my mind and split the difference- and went with the 3.55s.

One downside of buying a car that's not plentiful on dealer lots is that you can't drive them all before you decide. My drive in a car with 3.31s was plenty quick...the 3.55s will likely only pull harder.

 

3.55s sound like a good choice.

 

I have 3.31's in my 11' GT and the car seems plenty fast to me. Although, I'll admit that I've already thought about changing them to 3.73's which will cost around $600 P&L. So, make sure that you get what you want. I say try and drive all of them before ordering or buying if you can wait that long.

 

That quote sounds about right but keep in mind that optional gears are $325ish...so going with your best guess and getting it wrong isn't as big of a loss as it sounds.

I think anyone who got the 3.31s will probably be happy with them. The standard axle on the previous generations of Mustang GTs were open diffs...which made the upgrade more important in past years...

...but they're all limited slip now.

 

I would get the standard gears, then have 4.10's or 4.30's installed after-the-fact. Increased gearing makes daily driving much more entertaining, makes the car "feel" much more powerful, will help at the dragstrip, and they won't affect highway gas mileage too much thanks to a generous overdrive.

 

Yes, 6th is a generous overdrive BUT you'll still be turning more RPM at any given speed with gears...so the right way to put this is that the "highway mileage will still be okay because..." but it will almost certainly be worse than the cars with the stock ratio.

 

Since 5th is the new 4th (1:1), 6th is hardly "generous". The 2011 MT 6th gear is 0.65, while the 2010 MT 5th gear is 0.68.

 

https://themustangsource.com/showthread.php?t=483731