4.88 or 5.29 gears

I currently have a 2020 TRD that I want to re gear and am torn betweeen the 4.88 or 5.29 gears. As you all know the constant shifting from 5th to 6th gear is a pain. I use the truck to drive 2 hrs to the ranch and drive 14 hours to Mexico to hunt Mule deer. Although I use the truck for off road, living in West TX a 2 hr highway drive to get anywhere is not uncommon. I am currently running 285/70r17 BFG KO2’s with added grill guard and bed weight. Any experienced input would be greatly appreciated. Attached is a pic of my 17 for reference that I am currently swapping everything over to my 2020.

 

Also, I currently have 4.30 gears.

 

No help on your choice of gearing but will be following the thread.

That's a good looking setup and fancy looking toy chest. If money isn't a concern AND you like the long legs for those long highway trips then perhaps you want your current gearing with more low end torque via the Magnuson Supercharger.

 

I was leaning to the Supercharger option but high octane fuel is not always available South of the border.

 

4.88s for sure, 5.29s would be revved to the moon with 33s.

 

Do you think there would be much difference between the 4.30’s and 4.88’s?

 

If you're serious about the supercharger an octane booster might resolve your concerns. I guess that topic would be a different thread. Good luck and have fun on your adventures.

 

Probably not a big difference in feel, about the same leap/percentage ratio as going from 3.90s to 4.30s. Not sure if you have a tune yet or not, but that could be a better solution instead of a couple thousand on gears.

 

@JoeCOVA on his https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-5-29-mega-thread.557305/ thread is confident there's no reason to use 4.88 at all.

I'm pretty stock with 32s and a topper shell and probably going to add a re-gear once I get to 33s. Probably will go 5.29s going off that thread.

 

Thought about the KDMax tune but there’s no one in my area (Midland TX) that’s licensed.

 

5.29 are totally over-geared for that tire size and weight. There’s a lot of hype around that gear size. Honestly I think it’s just because it’s a bigger number, and people like to have more.

4.88s on 33’s with weight would be perfect. I’m on 4.88s with about the same weight and 32.2” tires, and honestly the truck is slightly overgeared. I’d be better off if 4.56 if they made them, or to step up a tire size.

Don’t drink the koolaid. Go 4.88 max.

 

I'm going to go with 33s and 5.29 gears. It is perfect gearing. I just tow at 60 or 65 everywhere I go, so this is actually higher rpm than I'd run, and of course the offroad performance would be much better




I use this calculator

https://www.tremec.com/calculadora.php

 

5.29 and call it a day. I got 4.88 and could probably be better off with 5.29s. Don't get me wrong, Im happy with 4.88, but I think its normal to wonder if 5.29s would have been better.

Where do you hunt mule deer?

 

60 mph? You're gonna get run over by a semi here in the mid-atlantic.

OP is taking 14 hour jaunts through what sounds like open land... no thanks on that 60-65mph.

 

My gearing is stock but if I were changing 5.29 all day. If my math is right, on 33s, its a 200 RPM difference at 85. 2450 RPM vs 2650. My stock truck runs right on the middle of that RPM range at 85 since it has a hard time holding 6th at that speed.

 

I showed the rpm for 70mph, and there're stock cars with higher rpm than that at that speed. That's not even close to being to high a range.

 

Just went through west Texas, flat with a ton of enormous wind turbines. I am a fan of the 5.29 gearing and the tune. I have been on 33 and 35s with the 5.29 and there was very little difference in drivability as far as I can tell in the cab. You will not be high in the RPM range with either gear set. I currently cruise in the 70s usually, my RPM stays in the 2200 - 2400 mark, same with the 33s. Depending on how flat the ground is. The one thing to consider is that there may be a time in the future where you would want larger tires, the 5.29s would be a better choice in that regard. I would also recommend no matter what, you get it tuned. I have had it tuned for both 33s and 35s. The tune makes a huge difference in drivability, shifting, acceleration and it removes the lowered speed cap due to the higher gearing. One more thing to consider is a front locker. I'm a huge fan of any time you open the diffs on a vehicle you take off road it gets locked, no matter what. I don't care if I use the front locker once a month or once a year it's going in. So really, gearing, lockers and tune is the absolute best way to go. Those 3 upgrades will transform your truck to handle every single driving situation you could possible get yourself into. The improvement will be across the board in daily driving and trails. And all that for less than the price of a super charger. My gears and lockers, I needed 2 lockers, (Sport Life) were $3,300 total after core returns from ECGS, with me doing the install. Plan on maybe another $400- $600 for a shop to replace your stock diffs with the locked diffs. My long as 2 cents. Those turbines at night lock crazy when the red lights go on in sync it looks like an enormous space ship is about to land.

 

I LOVE your truck. So jealous.

 

I assume yours is manual. I have basically the same setup, manual, 33” tires, and added weight, but I live in San Francisco. I went 5.29 from the stock 4.30. My goal was to basically have the new 6th be where 5th was on stock and make 1st super low, which it did. It makes my daily driving in super steep terrain much easier. However, there’s lots of shifting at starts on road. I did like the 4.30 with the 33” tires for highway and flats, since 1st had power right off the line, up to a pretty high speed, but I didn’t really like having to shift down for hills, sometimes all the way down to 3rd at 65mph, and hill starts on steeps were burning clutch.

Now with 5.29s, steep terrain is no problem. I use 4th from about 30 to 50 mph. I rarely need to drop out of 5th on highway going 50mph+ in hills. 6th feels good around 70-75mph, with rpms around 3k, and has power to pass, and I can use cruise control in flat to mild hill terrain.

However, that magic crazy great gas mileage at 75 mph in 6th on flat ground is gone. I loose about 3 mpg at top highway speeds. Around town is about the same.

I would recommend the 4.88s if you drive lots of highway and flat/rolling terrain. The 5.29s are perfect for my application, but I would do 4.88s if I lived in TX.

I also installed a 2Low switch so I can have access to all my low range gears on the road. This is great if you find yourself reversing a big trailer, pulling a boat from a dock, parallel parking on a San Francisco street, or stuck in stop and go traffic up a steep incline. This might be a good compromise for you, to get 4.88s and have this 2 Low as a backup. There’s a plug and play and I did a post showing how to splice into that to do your own front locker or rear locker switch that only engages in 4 Low:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...rket-front-rear-lockers.758203/#post-27049161

Those online calculators are really hard to use to understand the change. Let me know if u need some real world numbers or tests for my manual transmission 5.29 setup on 33s.

 

There is a ton of good info here. @CAtacoWaves brought up a great point about the super low 1st gear. With the 5.29 it almost feels like a granny gear. I'm in FL so I rarely go into 4 low. However, I just got back from a trip to Utah where I started to use 4low and I was super impressed at how much quicker the torque kicked in over the 4 Hi. Very little gas in 4low to get over the those 2 step obstacles where you need to go over with the front and the rear tires at the same time. I actually went back and tried in both 4hi and 4low. In 4hi I was having to give it much more gas, 4low was just much smoother with less pedal.