DionR sounds right - no one has presented any firm evidence that there are two different housings, and several people have posted things that make me think there is only one housing (though there are two carriers). It would be great if Halifaxhops could respond to DionR's post #353.
I'm not sure whether there are one or two housings, but unless someone can show the two housings side by side, or at least from the same angle, give some measurements, part numbers, or point to a Chrysler document that mentions two housings, I'm going to have to assume that there is only one. I've heard this two-housing theory on other pages, but there's a LOT of contradictory information out there on 8 1/4s.
This really needs to be settled if we can. I appreciate Halifaxhops and everyone posting about this, but if the original post is incorrect, the thread should probably be deleted. Most people aren't going to read 300+ posts to figure out what is correct, they'll just go with what's in post #1.