[Formulajones]

A gear vendor only offers about a .78 overdrive ratio so I don't care to run too much rear gear in them.

I'd do a 3.42 with the Gear Vendor if only for the reason of highway cruising.

Reason being, doing the math, 3.42's with a 27" tire and the .78 overdrive only yields about 60 mph at 2,000 rpm, and you still have to figure in converter slippage because you obviously won't have a lockup converter.

If you jump to 3.73's your mph drops to 55 at the same rpm.

If you're worried more about quarter mile times than highway cruising, then 3.73's would help. Cruising with those still isn't horrible with the gear vendor. It'll do about 70 mph at 2500 rpm. That's not bad, it's just not what is seen as overdrive territory.

What would be interesting though, is some dragstrip passes with the Gear Vendor before the rear gear swap. With 3.08's I'm betting you could cross the finish line in 2nd gear with the Vendor engaged. See what that's worth. 3.08's and a 1.48 2nd gear, with gear vendor engaged it turns 2nd into a 1.15 It'll do 114mph in 2nd overdrive at 5000 rpm.
Probably help you on the back half of the track, but you're still limited to the 2.48 first gear and only 3.08's for the first half of the track, so 60's aren't going to change.