1971 Chevy Suburban - SuperBurb - Part III

The reason for removing the bearing is to replace it with a sealed one supplied by Advance Adapters. By using a sealed design, fluid transfer between the transfer case, which uses gear oil, and the transmission, which uses synthetic lubricant, is eliminated. Once the bearing is in place the adapter, also from Advance, to mate the NP205 to the NV4500 can be bolted up.

Another critical piece from Advance Adapters is this shaft. It is used to mate the 10-spline shaft of the NP205 to the 32-spline shaft of the NV4500.

With all the pieces in place, the next step was to bolt the transfer case into its mountings, which was a lot harder than it sounds. The clearance between the shifter rails of the transfer case and the NV4500 was extremely tight and the NP205 had to be at just the right angle to slide into place. Luckily, the transmission jack adapter we obtained from Harbor Freight allowed for a lot of angle. That helped out a lot.

The new drivetrain is about 2 inches longer than the original, so Advance Adapters also supplies this bracket to extend the shifter linkage on the transfer case.

Another problem to contend with is that the transmission shifter no longer lines up with the hole in the floor. This means we will have to bust out the body saw and cut a portion of the floor. We will also have to fabricate some type of cover.

With the engine, tranny, and T-case in place, it was time to finish off the engine. For a carb, we chose a 750-cfm Quadrajet built by Jet Performance Products. The nice thing about Q-Jets from Jet Performance is that they are built for your vehicle. When ordering ours, we were quizzed by a technician about gearing, cam size, engine size, vehicle use, and so on, so our carb would be just right for us.

For ignition duties we turned to MSD and its Pro-Billet GM HEI distributor. HEI setups are nice because everything is in one housing and installation is simple. The MSD unit produces 50 percent more current than stock units do for plenty of performance. Its billet construction also makes it strong.

We wanted a nice full-length header that helped the GM Performance Parts HT 383 produce as much torque as possible, so we selected a set of Hooker Super Competition headers. Their full-length and four-into-one design should get plenty of torque down low. On top of this, they are nicely coated.

In spite of all the help that's available when you do a swap like this, you're pretty much on your own when it comes to figuring out how to mate the transmission to the crossmember. Advance Adapters supplies a solid mount--which would have worked--but we didn't like the idea of solid-mounting the transmission. We found that with some slight modification to the crossmember and with building an adapter plate, a standard Chevy tranny mount from Energy Suspension would work.