Anyone ever stepped down from 3.73 to 3.55 or 3.45? My ranger moves loads and tows occasionally. However I'd enjoy better gas mileage at the same time.....Anyone ever made this swap? I'm gonna go junkyard surfing for an lsd and trying to decide what I wanna do..... I could always go 4.10 what kinda fuel decrease would I see? Most of my driving is highway around 80 mph.

 

4:10 gears will suck your gas tank dry in a hurry. My 3.0 runs at about 2500 at 80 mph on the highway.

 

What rear end? And I figured as much but the towing and acceleration tho....I'm switching to lsd because I mean...c'mon.... lsd....for real tho I don't have 4x4 and I tend to find myself off road on the regular and I happen to pull ppl from the side of the road. So lsd will definitely aid my rescue efforts

 

If you tow even occasionally, you may want to keep the 3.73s. I have a 4.0 OHV with 3.27s. It gets great gas mileage, but it hurts it whenever I tow anything, even just a trailer with a mower on it. But best bet for you, if your set on 3.55s with LSD, you will have lots of luck finding an Explorer 8.8 in the junkyard. Most Explorer 8.8s will have LSD, but you will have to change the spring perches off of the bottom of the axle shaft and put them on top of the shaft for it to work properly on a Ranger and keep the back of the truck up. Not saying you won't be able to find a Ranger 8.8 axle with the specs that you want, it'll just be more common to see what you want in an Explorer rear axle.