I have recently bought a Haynes manual as I want to find out more about the workings of my car.

I came across a section detailing the gear rations for the car e.g.

1st Gear 3.5:1
2nd Gear ...:. and so on..

Could anyone tell me what the ratios actually mean and if you can calculate top speed etc achievable in each gear?

At the moment the numbers do not mean a thing to me!

3.5:1 means for every 3.5 turns of one gear, the other gear will turn once. This is put in very simple terms in which you will hopefully be able to understand them Steve.

You would be able to work out the theoretical top speed of the car (if the engine were powerful enough to propel it!) by careful analysis of the gear ratios

.....there must be some info on this subject somewhere on the net.....