So I'm new to the forum but I have been using the forum for information on my truck for some time now. It seams I should give something back to the forum to help others down the road.

If your like me and have an older F150, like my 1979 Long bed F150, you may have the awful full time 4x4 transfer case the NP203.

Mine like a lot of people's had been severarly abused durring its life, the case had developed a slack chain and was slipping on the cog making an terrible snapping noise in the case. The prior owner instead of addressing this problem had just installed hubs in the front to make the front axle turn free and ran the case in 4loc to remove the stress from the front drive line to prevent the chain from slipping.

This obviously was a bad idea due to the fact that in 4loc the NP203 will not lube some of the bearings of the diff in the T-case. The end result was a lunched T-case that would be costly to find the parts and rebuild it correctly replacing all the damaged parts (cog, chain, diff, bearings, seals, ext.).

The choice was to get a new NP203 or a NP205, I went with the NP205 because it was part time and its dam near impossible to kill.

Off to the junkyard I pulled a NP205 from a 79 Bronco for $75. When selecting a donor vehical find one that is a ford and of simmilar year this will ensure that you find a female 31 spline married imput. Grab the shifter and adapter housing when you get your T-Case. My T-Case came from a manual transmission I think a T-18. I have the auto C6 so this presented a problem with the adapter.

Most of you will not get as lucky as me when you pull the NP203 out of your truck and find that it already had a NP205 adapter housing bolted to your transmition, (It must have been mated to a NP205 earlyer in its life). If your not lucky like me pull your adapter housing and modify it to accept the NP205. You have to cut a notch out where the shifting linkage will have to clear the adapter, just match it up to your new NP205 and use a sharpie to mark between the bolt holes on the adapter housing where you will need to cut. I highly suggest using your old adapter housing as this one will be the correct length for your transmission.

From my reasearch there are two adapter housing for the C6 one that is about 5 3/4in long and the other that is longer I think around 8in. Just modifiy adapter housing this way you dont have to modify the cross member for your transmition and you will have the correct length adapter.

If you do get your T-case from a junk yard spend the 30 bucks and replace the input seals for the NP205, its worth doing seeing as you dont know how long your T-case has been sitting not moving in the junk yard. I also used the old yokes from my NP203 as mine where missing off the junkyard NP205 they should be 32 spline and fit just fine.

After you get your new T-case mounted up in the truck with the modified adapter housing (I shouldn't have to explain how to do that, just do it carefully with a good transmission jack, I got one at harbor freight tools for $80) your almost all the way there. You just have to modify your drive shafts, this is the biggest reason most people don't do the swap to the NP205, most people think that its expensive and a pain in the ***.

Granted it was, it cost me $120 to lengthen and rebalance the rear shaft, and about $100 for the front shaft unbalanced. Go to a reputable drive line shop, not just a mom and pop shop. A good drive line shop will be able to do it right and balance it, and it wont cost you an arm and leg. Don't do what I did and just assume that the front shaft will fit by just shortening it, it wont. If your front shaft is like mine it will have a double carden CV joint at the front output of the T-case, on the NP203 the T-case sits further back from the transmition due to the range box mounted to the front of the NP203. The NP205 doesnt have that range box on the front and it sits a good bit more forward. This means that your CV joint will smack your transmition at the oil pan.

I was stupid and didnt check to see if that would be an issue and paid $70 to have it balanced and shortened just to have the job redone. Have your drive line shop remove the CV and put a U-Joint in its place, flip the shaft so the slip joint is at the output of the T-case and bam your drive shaft will fit without hitting anything. You dont even have to change your yokes just get some u-bolts for the yoke at the T-case output. I got some generic ones from my local Advance Auto Parts, they didn't fit perfectly as they where 1-2mm to wide so I had my drive line shop just throw them in bench vise and close them up so they would fit. Yes I know what you are thinking, that's a CV yoke! And your right but you can make it work the 1330 U-Joint fits right in place and can work just fine.

I found a lot of information that was contradicting online and a lot of info that was helpful just take what everyone says with a grain of sand including me when doing your swap, everyone's swap will be slightly different. This swap was real easy and much cheaper then rebuilding my NP203 and now I have part time on a bulletproof T-case. I didn't take any photos but I can try to take some if you have a question and best explain it any way I can.

Thank you guys for putting out all kinds of helpful info I hope my experience will help someone else do the swap in their truck.

Oh yeah and if anyone wants a NP203 core let me know maybe we can make a deal I live in Colorado.