That's what I was in the beginning stages of doing to mine, but then realized that there is no neutral in the 273. So, went to the yard and got a 271 and will install at some point following a rebuild. Want to be able to flat tow behind the MH.

 

the only diffrence between the 271 and 273 is the 273 has syncros so you can shift it at speed rather than parked.

the "netural" in a 273 with a manual shifter would be as simple as building a neutral position into the shift gate between 2wd high and 4wd high.

 

I did read that somewhere…probably something you said. I could never find neutral in mine.

 

I pulled the defective shift motor off in a foot of snow. Shifted it into 4-High with an adjustable wrench.
I've got another motor on order. We've got another 16 inches of snow forecast. Hopefully the shipping truck has working 4WD, but probably not.

My issue is this:
Switches fail at the worst possible moment.
Motors fail at the worst possible moment.
Sensors fail at the worst possible moment.
The 4WD control module behind the glovebox will fail at some point.
The GEM module behind the fuse box will fail at some point.
As mentioned above, those last two components are unobtainium.

A lever pulled by my arm will never fail.

I don't like crawling under the truck in a foot of snow and/or mud to bang on a shift motor or shift the transfer case with an adjustable wrench.
And for what, so some soccer mom demographic that was origianlly the Excursion's primary target demographic wouldn't break a nail shifting into 4WD?

 

OP, what did you do about the a/c ducting that runs right over the hole for the manual shift assembly?

 

While I'm not the OP of this thread, I just took the dang thing out and threw it away.

 

Yea that’s what I was thinking I can’t Imagine it does much, for now I trimmed the left side off, but haven’t put everything back together so I may just leave it out.

Thanks for the reply!

 

I was converting to a manual shift transmission at the same time as the manual transfer case. So trimming one side wasn't an option for me. But if you're keeping the automatic trans, I suppose you could just trim one side. Just make sure your favorite kid sits on the passenger side on cold mornings.
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