Thoughts on 604 crate gearing

[dirtman47]

We have ran the same gear at our local track for a couple of years. We had been a top 3 or 4 car but last year we started falling behind in qualifying. One of our friends in the same class had been on less gear. He had been consistenly 3 to 4 tenths faster. This weekend we changed to a taller gear 6.05 to 5.84. the car responded well. We have been gearing our car for max rpm at the end of the straight. What am I missing. We don't over rev the engine usually turn it 6800. I bought a new engine because I thought it was flat. My tach quit working last weekend so I don't know what it did to the max rpm.

[Jking24]

Crates are kinda like truck motors they make more torque than horsepower and they tend to carry air of speed through the center of the corner beleive it or not many times they carry more speed across the center than a steel block car. If you over gear them they'll be out of their sweet spot if you will. Many times you pull gear out and wind up turning the same rpm with means your going faster. Another point worth making is you don't really hear a latemodel for "max rpm" at least i don't i gear it for the track type. For example a big sweeping half mile i may not turn as much rpm as i would at a stop and go paper clip type track. I'm more worried about the center of the corner and what i need out of the car. If i have to turn 300 more rpm at the end of the straight to get what i need mid corner than that's what i do. Obviously their is a ceiling but goodly it makes sense the way I've said it

[fastford]

does the track you are racing on generally get slick early ?

[bullittwrench]

Gear the car by the torque curve of the engine.