[SilverMiner]

In 1986, attaching an NP205 to a TH400 was NOT easy. Apparently.

Does anyone remember the Turtle Expeditions? They were "overland" in the late 70's and early 80's WAY before overland was cool. I've kept most all of the 4x4 magazines I bought back in the day, and have begun supplementing the gaps from eBay. In the June 1986 edition of Four Wheeler magazine Gary Wescott of the Turtle Expedition recounted his decision to replace the tried and true SM465/NP205 combo of his 1978 K20 truck into a TH400/NP205 system. The title of the article was "The Great Exchange" and was a separate article from their travel stories.

To summarize the article, Mr. Wescott had suffered multiple problems with the throw-out bearings on the manual trans Turtle truck and decided to swap to an Art Carr TH400 with a lower first and second gear packages (2.75:1 and 1.57:1 vs 2.48 and 1.4 stock). These changes were mainly due to the success of TH400's in Class 8 and Class 4 desert racing trucks.

The problems discussed in the Four Wheeler article related mostly to the difficulty they had mating the NP205 to a TH400 auto trans. It appears they relied solely upon the expertise of Art Carr to come up with an adapter, and the Art Carr folks chose their adapter kit which transformed the 6 bolt TH400 pattern to a 4-bolt and then WELDED a 32-spline coupler to the 10 spline of their original NP205 from the manual trans. This was 100% cobbled together yet seemed to work all right except the lower gear packages ultimately failed. The focus of the article was their difficulty adapting their preferred transfer case to their desired transmission.

So, the question I have from the perspective of 2019 - why the heck didn't they go to a junkyard and pull the transfer case adapter from a 1983 or newer GM K30 system that came factory with the TH400/NP205 combo? For crying out loud, we are still mining those resources today - they must have been easier to source back then. I mean, they were in Southern California, the promised land of all parts especially when it comes to magazine articles with presumably giant budgets.

Does anyone here have any insight into why the Wescott's went to such lengths to solve what is now a minor problem requiring only money? I myself accomplished this modification fairly easily just by sending money to Advance Adapters. Thank goodness for them.