Recently picked up an 88 samurai, was told it has the 85% reduced low range and 18% reduced high range with 4.56 gear sets. Running 235 75 tires it doesn't wind up until about 70 mph leading me to believe it doesn't in fact have 4.56 gear sets.  Primarily an off road vehicle not needing to exceed 55mph I would like a lower high range to avoid 4low while in the hills. Any way to confirm gear sets?

Forgot to mention it has a new high output motor, told it was rated at 100hp.

A couple of things.. Hope this helps... IF it still has a 1300 engine (look on the block down by the bellhousing, exhaust side) If you see a 1324 or a 1298, you have a 1.3 liter... getting 100 hp out of that engine is difficult.

4.56 r&p is quite uncommon. I believe that Yukon may have made/make that, Richmond had that for a bit if memory serves. A common swap would be to use the Sidekick's 4.62:1 It may have that, jack up your rig and spin a tire to find out.

One of the many cool things about the Samurai is that the t-case offers low AND high range reduction. You may have an aftermarket gear set inside that. Again, it's best to jack up the rig and count rotations in vs. rotations out and figure out what you've got.

Being able to do an actual 70mph (verify this with GPS) is a good sign that you do have some gear reduction as a stock engine and gear set will usually really struggle to push a Samurai that fast.

Hope that helps. Bottom line is jack up your rig and verify your ratios by counting the input rotations to the output.

-Eric

I have found the receipts for the t-case so I know that's reduced.now I will check the diff gears by rotation. No rpm guage but yes GPS had it at 75 showing 80 on speedo and finally feels in the power range and can hear the carb open up  between 60-70.. Really want lower gears for the hills so will do tire rotation to check.. Thanks for the reply