I am working through a conversion from a 1.6 manual to 1.6 auto.  Divorced transfer case.  5.12 in the diff and 5.14 in the transfer case.  It will be too slow for the road with these gears.  I have an extra stock transfer case.  Thinking about using the stock primary and splitting the gears on the intermediate shaft to use the stock high range gear and and my 5.14 low range.  That is, saw the intermediate shafts from both cases in half and weld a stock high gear to the 5.14 low gear. Final drive gears on the output would be restacked with stock and 5.14.  I have access to a machine shop. Anybody done such a thing? 

Hello! Sounds like a fun project. Probably not a good idea to try to saw that shaft...it is probably hardened...it will just laugh at a normal band saw blade. Also it would be iffy welding the two pieces of hardened shaft back together and keeping them perfectly straight. Other than that, it sounds feasible...but I have not upgraded a case yet, so I don't know exactly how the gears mesh together....I will be lookin for your write up on your work, with pictures of course....

The shaft and bearings the gear rides on might help keep it true.  That and some selective tuning with a hammer while spot welding it and spinning  the gears over a dial indicator.  My machinist friend will be able to tell me if this stuff can be welded. 

The first samurai 4:1 tcase gears were actually welded gears.  They took gears from the samurai tcase and the sj410 tcase, cut some of them and mixed and matched and welded them back together.  There are probably 1000s of these welded gears in use.  I have read that several people had problems with the gears breaking at the welds, but they just rewelded them and they have held up fine ever since....kinda odd, you would think that the vendors/shops/companys that were welding the gears originally could do a better job welding than the end user...but I guess not.

Good to know.  I had read about welded gears but until I got one apart, I really did not understand where those welds would be.

My alternative is new diff gears.  I have lockers, different splines, hybrid axles etc and I suspect that would get complicated too. 

Here is what the original welded tcase gears look like.

They look like they would hold up to the massive torque of a 1.6 Sammy.

This is looking like it may be a good combo for me.  I should get about 60 mph in road gear out of my 3speed auto and still have a great crawl ratio.

They look like they would hold up to the massive torque of a 1.6 Sammy.

This is looking like it may be a good combo for me.  I should get about 60 mph in road gear out of my 3speed auto and still have a great crawl ratio.

You would think so.  But like I said, I have heard of several of them breaking with just the samurai 1.3. 
But maybe you can weld better than what whoever was making the original 4:1s could.

I am sure that with the right method it can be made strong.  wrong method and they will fall apart in your hand.