HD231 Question

I ended up fixing a heavy duty NP231 for a buddy with no $$$. Go figure.... It was from a mid 90's Dodge Dakota. A couple of things surprised me. First the wider chain was really stretched badly, but I think the guy drove in 4wd on dry road a lot. I knew it had the wide chain, but I thought that all the heavy duty NP231's also had a 6 gear planetary. This one didn't. The other thing that was different was that there was no syncro on the gears.

My questions for future reference are: Is it normal for the heavy duty units to only have a 3 gear planetary? And if I want to score a 6 gear planetary, what tcase is a good donor? Next question is, are there any HD wide chain units that are syncro'd?

As I mentioned in that other thread, the 241's have a 6 pinion planetary. Take a look at my article on http://www.madxj.com. I installed a wide chain and sprocket setup along with a 6 pinion planetary and AA HD SYE in my 231. My '93 case had the synchro parts and the '98 did not. The box I got found the wide sprockets in had synchro's also, so I took the synchro parts at the same time. I installed everything with the synchro parts but then experienced some noise that I couldn't figure out, so I broke the case apart, removed the synchro parts thinking that they may have been the problem, but upon reinstall, the noise was still there. It isn't too bad, but a bothersome clicking. I'm thinking it is the CV on the front driveshaft now. I had wore out motor mounts and tranny mount that I also replaced and reduced bad noises. So, synchro or no is just a matter of installing a wide sprocket that had the synchro originally as well as the synchro parts. I believe NP207's as well as chevy NP231C's used the wide chain and a synchro. Hope this helps a bit. Jeff

I personally don't much care about having synco's, but I thought I would ask. I ended up swapping in the narrow sprokets and chain for my buddy's rig, since he had no money and I had the spare parts. As a result, I ended up with the sprockets for the wide chain. I have a backup xfercase complete with SYE, and I thought about putting in the wide chain and planetaries, and then making it my primary tcase and keeping the other for my spare.

The only problem I have now, is finding a cheap wide chain. Everybody wants around a hundred bucks but I have heard of suppliers that have them for more like $70.

Thanks for the info. There aren't too many people out there that know much about tcases.