Update order in pivot table when using sync in Laravel - php

Question

In Laravel 4.2, I have the following code:
$thingIds = [];
foreach ($this->things as $thing) {
$thingIds[] = $thing->id;
}
$thong->things()->sync($thingIds);
$thong->save();
Which seems to work for me, however in my pivot table I have an order column that isnt being updated/synced correctly. The order is set to 1 for each item in the pivot table, however I want the order to be representative of the order of the ids in $thingIds.
Is this possible?
Is it possible to update an additional column in the pivot table using ->sync()?
After the suggestion in the comments, I have also tried the following code:
$thingIds = [];
foreach ($this->things as $index => $thing) {
$thingIds[$thing->id] = ['order' => $index];
}
$thong->things()->sync($thingIds);
$thong->save();
And I have tried
$thingIds = [];
$order = [];
foreach ($this->things as $index => $thing) {
$thingIds[] = $thing->id;
$order[] = ['order' => $index];
}
$thong->things()->sync(array_combine($thingIds, $order));
$thong->save();
But neither of these is working (the order is still 1 for each item in the pivot table). Can anyone explain what I am doing wrong?
If I do the attaching one at a time, like so:
foreach ($this->things as $index => $thing) {
$thong->things()->attach($thing, ['order' => $index]);
}
The order comes out correctly in the pivot table. How can I get the same effect but whilst still using ->sync()?