If your truck is stock height/stock tire size with something like 3.08 gears, swapping to 3.73 gears and the NV4500 would be a good setup (this is what I'm wanting to do to dad's stock size truck), closer to like what the modern Z-71s run. But then you're talking more expense of course. The bad thing about the Ranger is, even though you can split gears your stock gears will still be the same (3rd gear screaming up the hill) but would the 2nd gear with the high gear be any better? Axle ratio always makes up a big part of the difference. As long as you can keep your 70 mph 5th gear rpms close to 2,000 rpms it will be a much better setup than the SM465 whose 3.08 gears tries to keep 4th gear closer to 2,000 rpms. You can also do some tweaks to the engine to get more torque out of it, like a more torquey cam swap. There more than likely isn't one perfect answer but a combination of things.
