JD49 writes, "...been thinking about the "Ranger" Aux. for awhile for my 1 ton."
Those _Ranger_ overdrives are very nice, least if you are not age addled like me and confuse names of transmissions.
Years back, Jesse James of Sandra Bullock fame, turned me onto one of those to solve a problem with highway speed in my 3600 four wheel drive Chevy, a NAPCO truck.
Originally, I talked with him about old Warn overdrives which bolt on the back of a Dana transfer case. Had one of those in a cab-over Jeep FC-170. Nice truck, rue the day I sold it decades back when young and stupid. Today, I am just stupid. The Warn overdrive was nice but hard to shift and not all that strong. Warn design is planetary gears much like an old Chevy 3 speed with an overdrive unit.
Besides, my Chevy had a divorced transfer case, huge Rockwell built back in 1942 year; a rock crusher. Impossible to mount a Warn overdrive, even with a fancy adapter.
We discussed Brown-Lipe auxiliary transmissions and decided those are too long and too big to use in a four wheel drive; too radical of an angle on a driveshaft. Back then, Jesse had his motorcycle shop and ran a sideline business of making driveshafts, "Extreme Angle" or some similar shop name, age addled, cannot rightly remember.
He walked me to the back of his shop, showed me a Ranger overdrive. Right then, I knew this was the solution.
Again, nice trans, shifts good, design is much like a regular transmission, easy to install. Only requires shortening your driveshaft or, if four wheel drive, longer in front, shorter in back. Problem free installation with expected modifications, such as adding a support frame somewhere along the line because of being a four wheel drive; long length, lot of weight.
Well, one problem but not with the Ranger. On a 235 Chevy six, lower two bellhousing bolt holes are threaded, bolts thread into the bellhousing from the outside. Shifter on a Ranger is on the driver's side. The shift cover is in the way of inserting a long enough bolt to fully thread into 235 six bellhousing, lower driver side bolt hole. You either remove the shifter cover to have room to slip in a long bolt, or drill out your threaded bellhousing bolt hole then insert the bolt from inside the bellhousing. I lucked into an oddball allen head bolt which just barely passed the shifter housing with a little grinding on the Ranger case. Need to grind a bit on a washer, oval shape it.
This problem is only with old 235 six cylinder bellhousings.
Overall, great transmission. Smooth, strong, easy shifting. Some complain about transmission whine. I have not noticed this. However, hard to hear much over the growl of my SM420 4 speed and I am half deaf, old worn out hairy big ears.
Final installation is I modified my SM420 with a longer internal main shaft, rear aluminum adapter, then a Dana 20 direct mount transfer case. With the seven inch Ranger, overall length of this system had both drive shafts within a couple inches of original location.
With the Ranger 27% overdrive, I can comfortably cruise at 65, not much more than this, though. Now I don't have all those bats out of hell on the freeways honking their horns at me while flipping me the bird. Suppose I am a bit old and slow, like my truck.
Billyray
