All this talk of gearboxes has made me think about altering the gearing on my newage WRX...

Is it possible to alter the final drive ratio in much the same way as dropping the front tooth on a bike?

How far can you go? From what I can gather, gearboxes tend to be a compromise between acceleration and top speed. As I never go over 100mph, and never take the car on the motoway (got the wife's Furby vRS for that ), would it be possible to down gear the car to about 110mph flat out in fifth?

Is that close to a RA gearbox? How much difference would it make? Would it cost mega money?

I down geared my bike which made it feel like it had increased in capacity

 

The downside to downgearing is that you will spend more time changing gear, which will lose you time in a Subaru IMHO. If you are still on the stock turbo (which makes sense given never going over 100 mph IMHO) and rev limit then I think the stock gearbox is quite well matched. As your car is, 2nd and 3rd gear should be quite nice for acceleration, both with wide power bands.

I have the opposite problem, my gearing is way too short on a UK six speed, the first four gears are gone far too quickly, each gear lasting about 2 seconds. Way too manic, and I keep dreaming about autos, until I drive a normal car when the gears last forever and you are hardly ever changing, then an auto would feel way too lazy.

 

What I don't like is having to drop down to second gear to overtake cars at about 40mph...

We have a section of dual carriageway which turns from a 40 to a national speed limit, I'm often finding myself having to drop down to second.

I suppose a remap/decat will cure the problem

 

If you really want a auto I have a spare autobox from a JDM impreza Wrx with torque converter and difs.

Ed

 

Thanks Ed, I would if there was a proven way to make them strong. Level Ten in the US will do stuff for them, but it is not practical sending gearboxes back and forth across the Atlantic I don't think.