....or just extremely confused???

My friend bought a mid-70's chevy 1/2 ton 4x4 for a parts truck and said that I could take anything that I wanted off of it that I wanted. So it has a 44 front and 12 bolt rear and I needed the carrier out of the 12 bolt if it was above 3.73 gears. So I put the hi-lift on the back rear bumper and lifted the driver rear tire off the ground, marked the tire and driveshaft and rotated the tire one full revolution. Well the driveshaft only rotated about 1.75 turns. I tried spinning the driveshaft and got the same results (of course) so now I'm confused. I thought it was a direct relationship between the two for the gear ratio, so does that mean it has 1.75 gears?? I don't see how the hell thats possible. It has a 350/350/and I forget which x-fer case.

i have done the same thing. i think it has to do with the operation of the open diff. they will give you false readings. the best way is to remove the diff cover, mark the ring gear, and do it that way.

Put a jack under the diff and lift both tires off the ground. If that doesn't work for you, then take off the diff cover and look for the numbers stamped into the outside of the ring gear. Example: 4.10's will be 41:10 and 4.27's would be 47:11.

Divide the larger number by the smaller...

As was said, it has to do with the open diff. I *think* it has 3.50 gears from what you describe...

To get an accurate reading, chock one of the tires still, and then turn the other tire and count driveshaft revolutions... that should get you the correct ratio :)

IT has 3.50 gears and an open diff. an open diff makes it so the average number of revolutions of each of the rear tires is equal to the number of revolutions of the ring gear. to get your ratio you needed to make the ring gear spin one revolution. You could either spin one tire all the way around twice or both tires all the way around once.