BW1354/1354 Doubler

[holyford86]

The junk I walked past in JY's in years past...

I vividly remember the manual 1354 laying beside the truck I harvested my bucket seat brackets from. I didn't try it but the thing was very clean, almost looked brand new. "That is a shame, I have a V8 swap now. It is of no use to me"

Now I have a '91 with an electric t-case...

Same here, now if I see things I may need in the future I just buy them if I can afford them, because I'll need it or someone else will. When the shifter boots alone can sell for almost what I paid for a whole truck it makes it a hard deal to pass up sometimes.

I had a whole bunch of manual 1350's at one point because a significant majority of 1st gen trucks came with them. I used most of them up on project trucks that came to me with manual 1354's... keep the good parts and send the truck down the road with a perfectly functional but not quite right 1350. Kind of like FM146 swapping Explorers that had bad M5OD's... These days it's hard to find any 1st gen to part out, let alone a 4x4 one with a manual t-case.

The Behemoth deal is really great because you don't need to hack up a good manual t-case and you can use planetaries from an electric shift one. If a guy has a handful of manual 1354's, pretty easy decision to sell a couple and fund the entire Behemoth setup.

I've still got a couple 1350s, including an oddball fixed front yoke case which will end up in a b2 project someday if I ever get around to it.

I've also got a pile of 1354 electric cases, because other than the shifter assembly and front case half, everything is identical. The behemoth deal is attractive to me because of both the fact it uses parts that are still relatively easy to get, doesn't take up a ton of space and uses the oiling system already present in the case are all attractive things to me

I had a home made 1350 doubler that I bought used off of marketplace, then went through it and repaired the shortcomings and issues it had, chewed on it a while then decided to sell it to a member here because of the space it took up and such, I wonder if it's still alive, haha.

 

[holyford86]

Exactly.
I quit buying them from our local pull a part when the prices became insane. $200 for an unknown unit, I have to pull it, then they want $75 for a core and another $25+ in silly fees. I'd rather buy a $500 parts truck.

I'm good friends with the owner of my local junkyard, that being said, I can only buy what he has, and I bought the last 1354m he had over a decade ago. He'd want 200 for a unit I've gotta pull myself, if he had one. An entire 1996 with 112k on it popped up for 300 on marketplace, now I've got the transfer case I need, the shifter, boots, an entire front axle assembly for parts and a couple other odds and ends before it goes to scrap. The math doesn't math on junkyard stuff anymore...

 

[Shran]

Paying a junkyard a core charge is just complete utter nonsense, they just want more scrap to come in and pad their wallet. If you have no core then that's just free money for them. I have had them waive it a couple times because I said "I don't have a core, I'm using this for a transmission swap" which was the truth. Fortunately most of the yards don't play that stupid game.