Slo_crx1

It basicly boils down to this...if you run n/a, get a short geared tranny. Running boost, get a longer gear. Nothing sucks more than trying to shift through 2 gears of wheel spin on a boosted setup while in traffic.

Minor Threat

Boils down to power and weigh of car.

beerbongskickass

It boils down to more things than that. Saying short gears for N/A and long gears for boost it just retarded and bad advice. You can make any tranny work with the right combo of parts (tire size, traction, power, redline, street, stripp, etc... it all plays a role, just depends on what your setup is). What you don't want to do is get a long geared tranny because you can't get traction, you should get better suspension, better tires, staged boost control, a limited slip, etc... If you have a high revving vtec motor your going to want short gears to stay up in the powerband.

This guy wants to know what to do for 400+ whp, which means this will probably be for the track and decent size slicks. Let's say he has 400whp, 8500rpm redline, and 25 inch slicks. An LS tranny will top out in 4th gear at 153ph, he sure as hell isn't going to be trapping that. With a B16 tranny he will be topping out 4th at 130mph, that's going to work out a lot better for him.

http://forums.evans-tuning.com/viewtopic.php?t=1496

Here's a gearing calculator... http://www.autocrossing.com/cgi-bin/gearcalc.cgi

All that said... shorter gears > longer gears

Slo_crx1

That too. I pretty much gave him the extremely dumbed down answer. :1

As for BBKA...you make a good point. Everything you posted is great info if you plan on doing an all out track car. If it's street driven, then it just gets to be a pita. I have an S1 trans on my b16 right now, and everyone told me the same thing you just did...gotta have a shorter geared trans so when you shift you can still keep it in vtec range. And that s1 always does keep me above 4600rpm when I shift. I tried a ys1 trans and it was alot of fun on the street in n/a form, but once I turbo'd the motor I absolutely hated it. Granted the lsd was nice (next thing on the list for the s1 trans), but the close gearing sucked...all wheel spin up through 3rd gear even with a 17" wheel and a decent set of tires. My 15" wheels with road race m/t's were even worse.
Here's another factor that will play in as well...spool time. My turbo hits threshold at 3k, so I want the longer gearing. Most bigger turbo setups that take longer to reach that threshold would want the shorter geared tranny. Honestly it's too vague of a question to give a definate answer on, but seeing who the poster of the thread is that really doesn't suprise me. :P

salesmonkey

my b16 tranny with 205/55/14 tires tapped out pretty close to 112-115mph with a 8500 rev limit. not sure what it would tap out with some decent slicks. but i wouldnt mind trying a ls tranny especially if i had something bigger then my b16.

ososlohatch

short>long you race two of the same car with the same power the one with the shorter gears is going to win everytime from a dig

Minor Threat

That car has suspension, slicks, staged boost control, I assume a limited slip and a high revving (9500RPM) VTEC engine. Runs LS gearbox, and normal sized slicks, runs 10s.

beerbongskickass

9500rpms and 24.5 slicks with an LS tranny will top out in 4th gear at 168mph, so that combo sure doesn't make any sense to me when your just looking at the math. If he had b16 gearing he would be topping out 4th at 142mph which would work pretty well for 600whp (The ross-mobile was around that much power and trapped 140mph right?). Although the weight of the car you mentioned is a lot less than a 4 door eg, so it's going to trap more.

Like I said in my previous post it's going to be different on every setup and you could change a lot of things to make the LS tranny or B16 tranny work. Go back and read that thread I posted, mostly the comments from Jeff and Earl, Jeff explains the math part very well and Earl talks about going between a B16 tranny and LS tranny without much difference in times and they have used 22-28 inch slicks (doesn't get too specific though). Gear spacing of the tranny and your powerband is also a big part of it. Somebody that has a very short high powerband would hate long gears, dropping out of boost will kill your times. Then again if you have a bigger powerband you might be better suited for longer gears, just depends on your setup.

Since were quoting people, here's a quote from the evans thread I posted... "For whats it worth, ever SFWD car that i have seen running in the 9's is using the SI tranny, or SI gearing"

Oh and we all know JD has a thing for LS motors and tranny's, he would marry and LS swap if he could. :P

Minor Threat

Yeah, but it's not Joey's car so there's a little less bias.

I agree with you on some points and not on others, I think you can make either gear box work for whatever setup you choose to run, it's just a question of matching the rest of the components together.

I have always been of the opinion that if you have the power to push the long gear, take it, as it will make a much more enjoyable car to drive on the street. I know the math looks dumb, but fighting to get traction in the first 3 gears is enough for me to stick with longer gears. And if you take it to the track, run a smaller slick than normal to cancel it out.

Bone1

BBKA, I is transmaster so the simple gearing factors you presented.