02 S-10 gearing question.
 

Here’s one for the gurus. I looked up the truck and google lied. Said it had 3:73 gears but the manual says 4:10. At 65 it’s at least 2500 rpm (I will edit tomorrow with actual rpms). I would like to drop them lower so here’s the situation:
I have a GearVendors unit in the 93 3500 truck and it drops rpms by 500. I cut the driveshaft and installed it myself. Would it benefit me to put it in the S-10 or should I leave it alone and sell the unit? Pretty sure it would sell between 1500-2000 which i could use towards gas.
I just got the truck and my plans are to go camping. Some trips will be over 1000 miles round trip. Right now I avg 25 and fill up every 300 miles or so (there’s something wrong with the sending unit. PO said it will run out before empty). I will carry an extra 30 gallons in the back and use a pump to fill when needed.
What are y’all’s thoughts?

"Don't be evil' is water under the bridge.

Even DuckDuckGo is looking sketchy, being powered by Bing, which is down the AI rabbit-hole.
I hear good thinggs about Brave Search, and then there is StartPage.

Why support those that don't even pretend to not be evil? And where is Larry Page?

I say be evil.
Just don't hurt too many people that don't deserve it.

GM gear ratios are about 9% between ratios. So 18% is closest to 3.42 for your 7.5” rear end. That is a big jump, I played with gear ratios when I was running Geo Metros several years ago. I don’t know if 3:73 will be enough to be worth the trouble, that is entirely up to you. The 3:42 set might be 4th gear into a head wind with a 2.2. The V6 s10 probably has an 8.5” diff with 3:73 or 3:42. Driveshaft might be a different length with the 8.5”.

I dunno. Is that evil or righteous? :confused;

yes. it IS a lot of trouble/time to put one in. i’m leaning towards selling it.

I wouldn't bother with a gear vender unit.
Standard gm gear ratios should be fine.

'2500-rpm @ 65'
 

For the OEM truck, GM may have already 'optimized' the gearing, considering passing acceleration, hill climbing, full load, towing, etc..
To arbitrarily change it, you'd be completely shooting in the dark.
My CRX has three overdrive gears and 'ANY' headwind, road grade, passing maneuver, etc. requires a downshift to, as low as 3rd-gear, just to maintain a constant speed.
At Bonneville, I could never take it out of 3rd, as , if I did, the engine would completely come out of it's torque curve and fall on it's face. I'd go from 97.386-mph top speed, to 89.61-mph.
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I recommend that you exhaust all available avenues of research to see what other S-10 owners have experimented with, and all the outcomes.

Although adding an external overdrive should move the engine to a more efficient RPM/load, you're also sending power through a lossy extra set of reduction gears, which probably eats 2-4% of the total fuel economy. You lose part of what you gain.

True. Although I couldn’t notice any reasonable gains in mileage in the other truck it at least brought rpms down enough to reduce strain on the engine.