Fellow NV3500 5-speed owners,

When do you all use overdrive 5th gear? I drive (Daily) a [fairly] hilly country 60mph highway here in NW missouri. I almost Always use 5th gear on this rd but i thought i might ask if i am actually hurting my gas mileage. On the hills i can feel my engine (318) bogging down and lugging, sometimes losing some speed, and i have to give it a lot more throttle in order to maintain a decent speed, but i still often sing to around 55mph on the longer hills. My question is would it be better for me to use the 1:1 ratio of 4th gear and not make my engine struggle on the hills, or use the overdrive .73:1 anyway for less rpm's. My truck is a 94 ram 1500 318, with nv3500 of course. It is a 4wd with 265 75r16's. However, i do not know the gearing and the truck is not equipped with a tachometer, so i cannot give you rpms at each gear at 60 mph. thanks for any input!

Alex

 

Look under your hood, right below the latch, there is a sticker that should tell you what gears you have.

 

unfortunately the 15 yr old sticker is practically un-readable after almost 170k miles and some overspray frome a previous re-spray

 

It's your personal call there. I know on our 5 speed tow truck, we will grab 4th going up a hill if it starts to bog down. That is unloaded, we will always down shift going up hill with a load on.

 

Haha. Mine is still readable after 171,000!

 

were the 2nd gen's diffs stampted with gear ratio?