Buying 89 Sierra 4wd W/ A Slipping Low Range Gear

[heygibb]

Greetings to fellow gmc owners and techs.

I am seriously thinking of purchasing an 89 K1500 Sierra. It has the normal wear an tear, mostly cosmetic, which I can live with. I'm getting it for camping, kayaking and boat hauling so the 4wd needs to work. On my test drive, the high range 4wd worked fine, from what I could tell. It engaged and disengaged w/ no hesitation. I 'felt" the extra pulling power and there were no unusual noises.

However, when I engaged the low range 4wd, the first gear hesitated to lock in and then lurched as it did after upping the rpms. After that, it felt it was pulling as it should. My questions are these:

 

1-Is this hesitation to engage adjustable w/out a major repair bill?

2-Would using the low range to pull my boat off the ramp with this condition tend to worsen over time?

3-If the low range 4wd failed, would it have any effect on the hi range 4wd? I imagine I could manage ramp issues w/ the hi range but had planned on the lo range to do that.

 

If anyone w/ any knowledge of this is around here on the weekend, I would appreciate your feedback. I'm supposed to decide by Monday if I want the truck or not.

 

Thanks

Tim