4l80 swap with manual transfer case

[abishoff]

I'm looking at doing a 4l80 swap on my 06 Denali. Since I have a Borg Warner tcase, I'd have to get the 149 tcase to do the AWD 4l80 swap. Since I've converted my front seats from console to front bench seating, I was thinking I could do a manual 4wd transfer case which would get me better off road performance and possibly better mpg on the road when it's in 2wd. What options do I have for a manual transfer case for the 4l80?


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[dantheman]

i am interested in what you find. my friend has a 04 burb and wants to go 4l80e with electric shift tcase. he already has a z71 burb with the electric shift but im curious if there is a difference.

id imagine GM being the cheap asses they are use the same bolt pattern between the 60 and 80 trans to bolt to the tcase.

 

[retiredsparky]

The obvious advantage to not having AWD is that you are no longer wearing out all that very expensive stuff up front.

One question I would have for those smarter than me is how does the vehicle react electronically to no longer be able to totally control during limited traction events, even when stability control is off. I guess I wonder if there are liabilities, legally or otherwise if say you are in an accident that does cause harm to another person's insurance company and they send out someone to look at your damaged vehicle and pull the "black box", can there be any obvious clues for them to use against you? Like, hey, the driver of this rig could have been out of control, because he modified the vehicle from its original design. I have had many vehicles that were modified over the years, but never thought about this aspect until now.

 

[dantheman]

i might be wrong, but i dont think the stability control system in these trucks is quite that advanced and only uses the brakes to try and stabilize it. my understanding of the AWD system is that its 50/50 split in 4wd High essentially all the time. the only difference would be that you are manually operating the tcase to select when the front gets power and if its in high or low range after the swap.

 

[retiredsparky]

Dan, that sounds about right. So a brake gets applied to the wheel that is spinning faster than the others. And the brakes try to correct vehicle rotation when it does not match the steering wheel position information. A snowy parking lot would be a good time to test drive with and without stability control active to see which is preferable.