Hello all! I have been reading this thread off and on for over a year. The opportunity presented itself and I picked up an '01 sierra 4.3 with the 5 speed and the NP261 T-case. My daily driver is an '05 z71 SLE that I absolutely love. I am going to be putting the nv3500 out of the parts truck I picked up and would like to convert the (I believe) NP263 electronically controlled T-case to the 261 manual shift one. I understand I will obviously swap over the linkage and everything, my concern comes in with the wiring. I am currently in the process of inspecting/pulling the wiring out of the parts truck to see if I can just swap that in and pin whatever into the PCM. I am getting confused when it comes to the front diff actuator and what systems go into making that engage or disengage with the manual T-case swap

After googling and checking out different forums, I have not been able to get a concrete answer on what wiring I need to have in order to successfully do the manual t-case swap. Has this been done before? The thread I linked, he did the AWD to manual T-case swap but I don't understand how the front diff gets actuated in that instance either.

Thank you and sorry if this has been covered before, I tried doing advanced google searches and nothing besides "get a different truck" comes up.

 

The AWD trucks have a different front Differential that is always engaged.

 

i think the passenger side front half-shaft is also different between AWD & 4x4 because of that ^^
also, you technically c o u l d simply keep your electronic 4x4... you'd just have to swap the t-case input shaft to the 32spline unit from the donor np261 to match the 5speed's output.

 

You were thinking the same thing I was Zebra. I would like to swap over to the awd t case and retain the ability to unlock the front axle.