Taken from Cliff Chambers' "Ford Escort Downunder"
 
Twin cam with close ratio 4 speed (2.97:1 first gear) and 3.77 diff = 17.0 sec 1/4 mile
MK2 RS2000 with standard 4 speed (3.65:1 first gear) and 3.54 diff = 17.9 sec 1/4 mile
 
Just wondering what ET to expect with MK1 2 door, 2L pinto, 3.54 diff?
Right now 1st gear is too short with the 4.125 diff and much momentum is lost when starting from stand-still. And second gear too tall for takeoffs. But 2nd,3rd,4th changes are great, not dropping many revs.
 
3.54 diff will give better take off but how many revs will it drop between 1st to 2nd, 2-3, 3-4 etc?? Would it matter all that much with a Mild street cam??
 
The twin cam vs RS 2000 times show a pretty good effort by the RS2000.
 
 
 

With a 3.65 first gear and a 1.97 second your revs will drop by 46% when you change gears.  So, if you go to 7,000 rpm in first, you'll hit 3,770 rpm once in second (in theory - there are other considerations such as momentum etc., but for the sake of this example, you can ignore them).  From memory the remaining gears are 3rd 1.37:1, 4th 1:1, so 2nd to 3rd is 30% drop in revs, 3rd to 4th is 27% drop.