You'd have to get the ECM reprogrammed and you'd have to swap out the NP233 (assuming yours is 4WD).

 

Hmm. Never thought about the computer. So the NP233 won't work behind a 5-speed? What t-case did they use?

 

Like El B said
In Canada the 05s were dumped cheap in to the market
They were base models , absolutely no power options
I remember somebody telling me they were being marketed as "fleet vehicles"

I made the mistake of owning a 06 Dakota SLT 4.7l with a 5spd
It passed everything but a gas station
It didnt matter if I drove it like it was stolen or Sunday to church , it was even more thirsty than a Blazer
I had it back to the dealer for warranty work and they told me they had never seen a SLT with a stick

 

I was mistaken. For some reason, I'd gotten the impression you wanted to convert the transfer case to manual, as well. If you want to keep the electronically actuated transfer case, you can run the NP233 behind any transmission you can mate to it. If you wanted to run a five speed with the factory manual linkage for the manual transfer case, you'd have to go with the 231.
The ECM would still need to be reprogrammed, however.

 

Oh, ok. I would like to do a manual t-case, as well, but I know I'll need to ****** a 231 up for that.

So how does the ecm get reprogrammed? Can I just send it to one of those tuning places I've heard of on here?

 

Any shop which has the software to do that sort of work can do it. The automatic transmission is electronically controlled, and that gets programmed into the ECM. I'm not 100% certain if they just delete those parameters or what exactly they do, but it has to be done if you're swapping out the 4L60E for another transmission (if you're swapping in another electronically controlled automatic, like a 6L80E, new parameters have to be added, but if you dropped in an older 700R4 - which is mechanical - it would be more the same as swapping in a manual, from my understanding).