Everyone, thanks for the answers in this thread! Very informative. Anyone else, please feel free to chime in.

So basically, if I find a 3.5FD pumpkin, I don't need to upgrade the LSD etc...but if I go shorter aka 3.7+ that's when an upgraded LSD is needed.

Now all we need are comparison threads detailing the speed/performance difference between each FD setup so we can compare data....hmm

time to hit search again

 

Be careful if you get someone on the site to ship you their old FD gear... I did that and the jack a$$ sent them in a box, stacked gear to gear and wrapped in newspaper. By the time I got them, they had banged together so much during shipping, they were useless. He refused to refund the cash or replace the gears.

 

damn tht suks man. U should talk to the moderators and have them help you out. Its his fault because he didnot package the gears properly.

 

How are you liking the 3.5 fd? can u feel a certain difference?




QUOTE=sliderg35;3983547]Be careful if you get someone on the site to ship you their old FD gear... I did that and the jack a$$ sent them in a box, stacked gear to gear and wrapped in newspaper. By the time I got them, they had banged together so much during shipping, they were useless. He refused to refund the cash or replace the gears.[/QUOTE]

 

Oh that blows big time. I hope you didn't leave him any itrader feedback before u got the gears.

As for me, I just picked up my 3.5FD pumpkin this afternoon from someone local. Paid 300 for the whole setup and it includes VLSD. Should be great. I've never installed one of these before and I definately need to pickup a jack and some jackstands.

I may knock this out Saturday! I can't wait. Hopefully I get the whole new car feeling too

 

I'm just doing a straight swap with a local guy my 3.3 for his 3.5, we both have about 30K miles, he has a 4.1L stroked TT and mines N/A so we both benefit from the swap

 

Infinus, are you installing your pumpkin yourself or having someone else do it?

 

I'm having a local guy do it, he does all my mechanical work, his prices are unbeatable and hes really careful with the car

 

I'm weighing in the cost of me picking up a jack and some jackstands vs finding a good person to help me install the pumpkin....

Decisions....decisions

 

Again (and I hate to be the shadow of doom and gloom), installing new gears requires utmost accuracy and technical perfection to ensure the gears are installed properly. The clearance and installation tolerances are very tight and not something you can just "wing". If you haven't done this 100 times already, you should get a qualified specialist to do this work. If done improperly, you will have excessive noise (or worse!) from your rear end. (...and anyone who has had too much chili and beer can attest to - that's a bad thing.)

 

It's hard to say because I did the switch very close to the time I installed the turbos, so I could feel a BIG difference, but how much of that was the 3.5?

 

The seller I bought it from assured me it wasn't a difficult install since I'm swapping out the entire pumpkin vs changing the gears and internals.

I won't be able to come back to this until next week since I'm heading out of town later on today anyways.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm going to research some more to learn about how the install process is performed at least so I can know for myself