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John is correct, the amount of work required and the probable cost involved might be more than the upgrade s worth.
The differential gears are much easier to change, and you can probably even find a shop that will talk to you about it, whereas you had no luck with the overdrive idea.
I've done some looking into changing my differential gears to gain some top end speed for those rare times I have to drive on the freeways.
The Spicer 27 is relatively easy to work with, although to do the work yourself you'd need some special tools you might be able to make yourself.
Most of the manual transmission PV's seem to come with the 4.10:1 rear gear ratio.
You can easily raise the ratio by installing higher numerical gears, but that's opposite what you're trying to accomplish. If you were looking for more power off the line and didn't care about top speed, the change would be easy.
You can also lower the gear ratio by installing lower numerical gears, but I believe there is only one ratio available that will bolt directly to the gear carrier that's in your car right now. That's the 3.73, I think.
If you go lower, you'll need to replace the gear carrier assembly too. This is where a good transmission man would be a big help; he'd be able to tell you which gears are available to put into your car. I think you can go as low as 3.17, that is probably too great a change, as the car would be terribly slow off the line, and would take literally forever to get to cruising speed.
You need to find a gear that will give you a good balance or off-the-line performance (we've all been stuck behind that guy who is picking up speed so slowly that he surely must be pedaling!) and enough additional top end speed to keep up with modern traffic (at least the speed limit, if not faster!)
The points to remember are that if you go lower than 3.73:1 you'll need to have a different gear carrier installed, which may or may not be a problem.
Good luck!
Steve
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