Well........here goes!

[DarMar]

First post; been lurking for a while. Just acquired a 2001 Suzuki Swift 1.3l with the 3 speed auto and A/C!

I often do alot of start/stop driving and this was a choice I made. Anyway, I am curious if there is a way to change the "final drive ratio" to something (taller) different? I don't know what ratio the car currently has, nor what (if any) other ratios are available.

I have not been able to find anything on this. Could someone please shed a little light?

[SVOboy]

Welcome to EM! I cant answer the question but hopefully someone will soon!

[Wonderboy]

Welcome!
Your car's transmission is this:

1st: 3.55
2nd: 1.89
3rd: 1.28
4th: 0.91
5th: 0.76
Rev: 3.27
Final: 3.79

According to this source, if that's the same care you're driving, you have pretty much the same ratios as a metro XFi except for 1st gear (yours is a tad more torqued) - which no hypermiler stays in for very long anyway. Those ratios aren't going to get much better; I wouldn't touch the gearing in that tranny - you'd be hard pressed to find anything better that would fit the '01. Try to find a 1.0l engine that will pop on that tranny if you want to get dirty. That may improve your fuel efficiency. Too bad it's an automatic

[Daox]

Welcome to the site. I also can't answer your tranny question, but its good to see another driver here.

[DarMar]

I have the 3 speed automatic. Surprisingly it got 41 mpg; on both Scan Guage and at the pump with a good ol' calculator!

I really wanted to find out if there are alternatives to the final drive in my Automatic Trans that would lower rpms at freeway speeds. I'm thinking that maybe the final drives "may" be interchangeable from manual to auto; but I don't know. Help here would be great. Thanks for any assistance on this.

[Wonderboy]

Oh, my bad. I could've sworn it said auto, but it said "manual". Silly me. I guess all 5 gear ratios should've given me a hint . That site has info on the auto one too (I fixed the link above to link to the info on the AUTOMATIC one, and the final drive gearing is even better than that on the manual. The gears themselves, however, are indeed worse. You may be able to nab some manual swift gears that suit you best and pop them on? Not sure. I would've gone with the manual or nothing at all, but everyone's different. I respect that. I can't really find anything on if or how you can just pop manual swift gears into an auto, but then again I'm just a wannabe metrohead with a honda. Hopefully one of the real metroheads chimes in. Good luck!

[MetroMPG]

The source wonderboy linked to shows the auto tranny's final drive is a 3.61

The 5 speed from the 1.3 has a 3.523

So there's a small gain to be had there, IF the cogs are swappable between the auto/manual.

You could also go with taller tires (what are you wearing now)?

[Johnny Mullet]

Welcome to Ecomodder. There have been discussions on Torque converter lockup mods and a higher ratio change, but nothing has ever been posted that actually was a working mod. You are still getting good numbers with that setup though.

[DarMar]

Thanks for the info. The car's previous owner had 175/70R13 tires put on which are slightly shorter than the original tires. Here is a link to a tire size calculator. This link shows the tires specs and the differences between two different sizes; very cool. I am looking into some other tires which will yield around 5.5% less rpm's. The final drive numbers would gain about 2%+ IF they fit. So, looks like the tires will be my first mod and easiest also. The final drive thing is not going to happen; at least for now. Thanks again for the feedback and help.