So my info is pretty sketchy, so take it for whatever it may be worth.
The 435 is the granny gear heavy duty truck trans. Most work pickup trucks that came with a 4 speed, got them in the early days.
The mid 60s cars got the A833 4 speed up until around the mid 70s when the OD craze started because of fuel mileage. The a 833 was a tough bird before Mopar added the heavy duty version to use behind the 440s and the 426 Hemi. In the mid 70s, the 833 got an aluminum case instead of the cast iron version, and the OD trans got 3rd gear replaced with an OD gear (0.87 I believe) and the shift lever was flipped over so what used to be 4th was now 3rd, and visa-versa. The aluminum case could have problems under heavy abuse because the aluminum case would allow the main shaft and the secondary shafts to Waller out the holes in the case. I also believe Mopar offered a couple different 1st and 2ns gears as well to accommodate the lower powered vehicles.
i believe the 1st (and maybe part of the 2nd) year production Dakota got the aluminum case OD 833 but then they got the AX-15 5 speed. The AX-15 has the on top of the trans shift handle with internal sliding rods supported in the aluminum case that shifts the gears. The trans end of an AX-15 shift handle looks a lot like the bottom of the handle of the 435 shifter, but it fits in slots on the internal sliding the shift rods. Those sliding internal shift rods do not make power shifting very easy, they move way too slow to make us old motorheads happy (at least with the ax-15 in my coupe, but its also got nearly 200K miles on it).
I suspect the other lighter duty 5 speed (A535?) with the unique shifter was a short lived version of the AX -15 that had the 5 speed shifter outside of the trans body. It may have preceded the AX-15 or may have come after it. I've heard about it, but don't have any data on it. Dodge also had a few 5 speeds that had the bell attached, those bells were engine specific, and too new for me to be concerned about.
The NV 3500 and the NV 4500 are suppose to be the heavy duty 5 speeds put into the full sized trucks. I believe both of those also have the shift with the internal sliding shafts.
The main difference between the hydro bell and the mechanical bell is the hydro bell has provisions for mounting the hydraulic slave cylinder the replace the mechanical linkage on the older stuff. You can attach the slave cylinder to the mechanical bell, but it will take some engineering, just like you can convert the hydro bell back to a mechanical unit, but you will have to do some modifications because there is no provision to mount the ball stud for the cross bar.
Understand that Mopar didn't add any trans bolt pattern that didn't fit the current available transmissions. As the available transmission choices changed over the years, the trans bolt pattern on the bell kept pace, maybe only allowing an older trans pattern for a year or two. Of course, that was when Chrysler still was owned by Chrysler. I also suspect that as Chrysler was bought and sold a few times, the parts interchange may have became more consistent, the parts for a Dakota also fit a full size truck, and probably a jeep, but it could have really gotten screwed up too, because the "new" company wanted to use "their" parts instead of the last guy's parts.
Gene
