I have a SCT XCAL from BAMA on order, should arrive next week. I was thinking about upgrading to 3.73 rear gears, right now I have stock 2.73 - questions:

-the car has 8,000 miles on it, I bought it new in February. Because it is new, can I instal ONLY the FRPP ring & pinion or do I need to spend the extra money for the install kit?

Today I was quoted between 900 to 1100 dollars labor to swap the gears

Another shop quoted 400-500 in labor.

Anywhere around Austin that would do it any cheaper? And actually do it correctly....

Or is this just what it costs??

 

I paid $600 @ my dealer to get my gears installed. Seems like you got one quote that's on the high end and one on the low end.

 

South Texas Performance in San Antonio quoted me $225 if I provided my own parts.

I would recommend that you go ahead and buy the gear install kit, and don't forget o purchase the correct rear pinion bearing separately. Lastly, I would also recommend that you purchase a solid spacer/shim kit from Jegs. It replaces the crush sleeve and makes it easier to get the preload right, as well as making allowing repeated disassembly more convenient (and cheaper since you don't have to pay for new crush sleeves). Finally, it's more tolerant of abuse than the crush sleeve.

The Jegs part number is 555-61216, and the price is $11.50.

My final piece of advice is to never cheap out on parts like this. It costs a lot of money (as you've discovered) to pay someone else to do this kind of stuff, and you don't want them to have to do it AGAIN because of something you failed to provide/buy.

 

Great choice, the 3.73's will make a huge difference over those stock 2.73's! I would recommend purchasing the install kit just in case any gaskets/seals don't come out easily. They should be fine, But I replaced my gaskets when doing my gears at 3K (Majority of them were fine, but I figured since I had it opened why not). Also, on the 10+ Mustangs you have to replace the pinion bearing, no matter what!

I put them in myself but I think the average price of install for gears is in the $500 range. I hope this helps and best of luck! Let me know if you have any questions or need some assistance in the near future.

-Dan

 

I paid $489.99 for parts, labor, fluids and one year warranty. They wouldn't warranty the install if I didn't buy the parts from them so I did. I wouldn't buy from AM until you know that detail.

 

I was quoted $300 for just the install with me supplying all the parts and fluids.
But like Hogasswild said, find the shop you want to do it before buying all the stuff, some shops want to make their money off the parts also.