- Location
- Rainy side of Washington
Umm, no. Neutral is free wheeling for both driveshafts.
Depends on the year. AFAIK all RENIX years of the 231 they are locked together in neutral but not connected to the transmission... if I had to guess the breakover year is whenever they eliminated vacuum disconnect d30s, so 91-92 or so. The vac disconnect makes it so the transfer case doesn't have to disconnect the front and rear from each other in the neutral position (which is between 4lo and 4hi, so it introduces more slopes in the shift cam) so they made it so it didn't disconnect them.
No NP242 equipped vehicle will have a vac disconnect axle though, and I don't think NP242s ever locked the front/rear together in neutral, so that's probably not relevant to this thread.
Here's the comparison of the two shift cams:
Old style left, new style right. The top surface of the cam is the mode fork shift cam, the slot in the middle is the range fork shift cam.