Transfer case questions

[Slippery]

The car is a 2008 with 135k miles on it.



I have been running in 2wd by disconnecting the two plugs by the transfer case. This is due to trepidation or a vibration that was felt through the car, going to 2wd solved the issue.


My question are:


- how does a stretched transfer case chain manifests itself?


I have an issue where it sometimes does a hard downshift. I also feel some vibration when engine braking. I had it up in the air, and when you shift from D to R or R to D, you can see the rear driveshaft move abruptly towards one of the directions.



At first, I thought the rear differential bushings where bad, but when I inspected those they looked ok. The driveshaft moves like 20 degrees one way, vs 5 degrees the other way when going through the D/R/D exercise.



I was thinking maybe its a stretched transfer case chain, but not sure. It feels like there are some teeth missing from the transfer output to the rear.



Any ideas before I go and buy a rebuilt transfer case?