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      10-19-2017, 04:28 PM   #13
Bimmer-Bob
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Drives: 2010 128i
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Anacortes, WA

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The easiest way to test out if you can live with it or not is to drive your typical highway cruising speed in 5th gear and pretend you can't upshift anymore, because that's about where your 6th gear will be with a 3.73. Different people will have different tolerances, and do a different mix of driving (backroads, freeway, etc.), so you can't really go by any of our opinions, necessarily.

I personally think a 3.73 LSD was made for this car, but then I do very little freeway driving these days - although even when I do, I find I'm okay with the revs (and so is this engine). If the 5th gear test chatters your teeth too much, you might find the 3.64 (or even a 3.46, if you want to go really conservative) more your speed. It's a tricky thing, though - a lot of people will warn you about going too extreme, but it's also possible to be disappointed with too conservative a change. I will say that I heard from a lot of people that 3.73 was too much, so much so that I was a little regretful about it, but once I got it installed I was almost underwhelmed with the change. I mean, it was immediately noticeable, but it hardly rendered the car un-driveable, lol. Oh, one more thing - my gear ratio choice was somewhat influenced by autocross rules, which required me to choose a ratio that was actually offered on the chassis from the factory - so that limited me to the stock 3.23 ratio, or the 3.73 ratio from the automatic cars. So the choice was kind of made for me, but I'm glad with the way it turned out.

One thing the 5th gear test won't tell you is how the car will change at the bottom end. As you know, 1st gear is very short, even with the 3.23 ring and pinion. It's still short, but it's not unusable. I was sort of surprised by that. The shift points come earlier, of course, so you'll find yourself shifting a bit more even in lower speed driving. I could see how that might be annoying, but I got used to it pretty quickly, and didn't even notice it after a week or two.

Oh, and if you're choosing between a tune and an LSD with the shorter gearset, choose the latter. Unless you're doing the intake manifold and headers as well. Without those, the tune is going to be worthless, and with them it's more or less required.

Good luck!
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