Hello all,
The other week I was out wheeling some easy stuff in 4H heading on a slight downhill when all of a sudden, I felt a bang in the transfer and I lost all drive. Eventually worked out that it the transfer had popped into neutral and was now stuck. (I generally do a lot of wheeling around forestry roads and easier tracks in 4H as the auto provides a great reduction, and its to fast to be in 4L).
It happened again a little while later and after some further investigation it looks as though it only happens when going down hill with a bit of engine braking placing load onto the transfer. The issue becomes a bigger issue when the lever is in the 4H position, but resting in the notch of the 2wd/4wd rod.
This causes the 4H-4L rod to slip into neutral and cannot be pushed back in with the lever as it is out of sequence and the only way to fix it is the remove the rubber boots and lever and then get a large screwdriver and manually put it back in correctly. If it was resting in the 4H/4L rod, the lever would be in the correct grove and I could just put the transfer back into whatever position I needed, but for some reason it always sits over the passenger side
Now a lot of 'fixes' for this has been to replace the 'shifter sheet', a small cup that the ball of the lever moves in. This is not the issue in this instance. It also doesn't happen in 4L or 2H for some reason.
For those without a transfer ring, this would be a bit easier as you can get to the detent spring without removing the transfer.
The fix is to remove the 6mm allen key plug from the passenger side of the transfer, inside this is a detent spring and detent ball. My theory was that the load placed through the driveline was overcoming the tension placed on the detent ball, by the spring. So I added an additional spring and checked the load required to move the lever using a fishscale. The results were 4kg with factory spring, and 6kg for force with an additional spring. The pictures will explain the process.
This image shows the 4H/4L shift rod on the left, and the 2wd/4wd rod on the right. This configuration is 2wd high.
Handy tip, I added these small tabs onto the collet holding the lever in to help remove it.
Here is the detent spring location.
This is the spring I used.
and testing
And so far so good, no trackside fixes on the last 1000km trip around Tassie.
Thought this might be of some assistance to others with similar problems.
