so i was goin up my roommates driveway(lives in the mts lots of snow) put the truck in 4wdh but when i turned the switch...it grinded and then went right in to 4wd. doesnt do it in low though...its done it all day ive got 71460 on the entire drivetrain minus the trans which has bout 7k on it...do i need to change the fluid or is there something wrong with it?

 

It just grinds as it engages, or it grinds the whole time you're run it, like when you move?

These cases have a bad habit of "spinning" the pump housing and losing lubrication, but that would make the entire case have a problem.

If it only grinds when you do shift-on-the-fly while in motion, that would imply a failure of the solenoid activated clutch that gets the front driveshaft spinning before the main engagement of the chain happens. If that doesn't function, you'll get a noise when you shift, but it will stop once engaged.

If that's the symptom, don't engage it on the fly until you have it looked at. There's a brown wire that goes into the housing on the ones I've seen that is the wire for the solenoid clutch. It goes in it's own hole in the diff housing, just the one wire.

 

i was actaully at a stop when i did it the first time..though i was sliding a lil but once it was engaged there was no grinding...if it is that selenoid or wire...is it cheap to replace? and by cheap i mean 50 bucks or so?

 

I don't know, I've never done it. It doesn't have to be replaced if you don't mind shifting into 4 wheel drive when stopped.

It sole purpose is to get your front driveshaft up to speed before the hubs lock so that everything is moving at the same speed when the case engages.

 

well its workin fine now...

 

but thanks

 

mine's done it a couple times. When it does it I usually kick it back to 2wd, stop the truck, put it into 4wd and listen for it to kick into 4wd before proceeding. I also won't put it into 4wd while i'm spinning simply because of the nice CLUNK that comes with it. I've always had manual T/C's and I'm not a big fan of the electronic T/C.

 

yea i been toyin with the idea of makin it a manual case...think its gonna be a pain to do so?