The 5.29 Mega Thread!!

Yeah I’m going Yukon with my shop. From what I’ve heard is that Nitro gears are naturally a little noisy

 

I have Yukon from ECGS and they whine loud as hell

 

Yea that whine is definitely not brand specific

 

Why do the gears howl? I don’t get why ford can offer different gears on the bronco to accommodate 35”s that are silent but after market for Toyota are loud?

 

No howl here with Revolution 5.29s. Less noise than stock.

 

It’s likely more to do with setup than brand.

 

Also, brands don’t always consistently get their gears from the same factories. The stamp on the gears is more important than the brand on the box.

 

I was told by the shop that installed mine (grain of salt here) that they try to steer people away from Nitros just because they get so many noise complaints. I was also told Nitro are made in China, Yukons are sourced from China and different places, but Revolutions are made consistently in Korea. Not sure if that's true, but that's what I was told. I had asked for Nitros but they switched to Revolutions since polishing Nitros voids their warranty.

That being said, on my Revolutions I get a very faint whine when decelerating from 35 to 25 mph then it goes away. If I wasn't a member of Tacomaworld I wouldn't have noticed it but since I've read about gear whine ten-thousand times even before I considered re-gearing, I couldn't help but notice.

 

Nitro and Yukon are made in South Korea where most brands are made. You have some brands in India and Italy as well but there isn’t any empirical data that can tell us which brand is “better” both in noise or durability. Even if a brand switched to China, we wouldn’t know otherwise for some time and we don’t see differentials blowing because of it.

 

Don't be concerned. People have unrealistic expectations and think their regear is going to make the mass of their armor and tires go away, it won't. Your engine will still burn more fuel than in stock form, but the experience will be much more civilized, and you'll actually have useful low range again.

 

Does anyone regret moving to 5.29s and wish they’d just saved their money?

 

Honestly man even with the diff howling at certain speeds I don't regret it at all. The truck drives so much better. Maybe after a while some people just forget how shitty it really was before the regear

 

Nonsense

 

I wouldn't say I "regret" it, but I didn't see a lot of significant change. There is definitely lower end torque which is nice on the trails, but like I've stated before, driving 500 miles on highway to spend 20 miles on trails doesn't really balance out the cost/benefits very well. I noticed a bigger change from the KDMax tune than the regear.

 

Just driving around town does it make a big difference?

 

That's where you'll notice it. My factory gears were better on the highway (mpg's were higher), but the stop and go stuff is better with 5.29's. Also low range off road stuff is quite a bit better with the 5.29's.

 

Overall worth the $3K?

 

No not at all. Yes, I will hit 5th/6th more often which is nice, but the tune was responsible for the majority of that. Re-gearing does help some, but what is the real benefit of going into higher gears if you lose overall MPG? Will there be a long-term benefit on the drive train? I don't know, that's a very nebulous thing to determine. If I was towing, I suspect it would be much more beneficial, but I don't. I can't really say if I would do it over again, there's just no way to truly know what it is all about until you've tried it and put many thousands of miles down, only then can you really know. Some people want a road-friendly truck, some want an aggressive off-roader, I'm somewhere in-between.

 

Yea I'd say so. I got a bit lucky on mine though. My nitro gears were $1,291.05 when I bought them and I found a local guy who installed them for $1k, so quite a bit cheaper than $3k.

I will say, the tune I threw on here made a bigger difference than the gears did, but I do like having both.

 

The un-answerable question of "value". Only you can determine the value of something.