Running with front hub partially locked

jwanck11 · Mar 2, 2016

Would like to hear educated opinions on possible issues with running the the front hub halfway turned between Auto and Lock. When putting on new tires more than a month back, the tech must have inadvertently turned it.

I have been hearing an increasingly louder squealing from that tire and although had it back to the dealership several times, they did not catch the know was halfway between the positions.

I found it yesterday, turned it to Auto and immediately the squeal went away.

At this point, I am wondering just what damage/wear might have occurred in that time.

Thanks!

Jessy7.3 · Mar 2, 2016

I'm not completely sure on your truck, I have an 01 with auto hubs and tcase. I'm not sure if they changed much. I just saw no one has replied to this form so thought I may try and help. I had an issue on my truck where a grinding noise was coming in when I drove past a wall. Turns out the auto function had not completed disengagement of the hubs so inside the hub actuators, there is two gears. One gear is very plain looking and sits in a smooth spot in the other gear and the other sit on the outside and it has two sets of teeth and a smooth space in between them. When in auto but disengaged, the middle gear spins freely in between the teeth of the other gear. Then when you set to auto with hub engaged, the middle gear slides outward from the truck and meshes with the one set of teeth. When you manually engage the hubs, it slides past the middle and all the way toward the truck and meshes with another set. So what I'm thinking is if it was halfway manually turned in, that it would only wear the manual side. The auto side of the teeth should be unharmed. However if there are metal shavings that are being destructive, they may prevent hub locking at all. This is on an older truck though, so as long as they haven't changed the design, then I would say that the auto side of your hubs is fine. But I'm not 100% on your truck.

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