You can drive in 4-low. I have a powerstroke and pull a 13.5K lb trailer, and on a long hard hill I have been known to use 4-low in overdrive and not kill my tranny. The 4R100 is a hunk of trash, and it really does not take much to destroy it. 4Low is a life saver! Now, you MUST use common sense....on dry roads if you have auto hubs your taking a chance of breaking parts. One of the first thing anyone who buys a truck should do is take the out hubs and toss them in a trash can! Put a set of Warm premium or MileMarker hubs on...and use manual hubs. If you live in a wintery Northern area like me, you lock the hubs in in September and unlock them late May. If you need to pull a mamoth trailer up a mountain side all you do is unlock the hubs and go 4-low. Simple. The common sense is watching RPM's. An engine is and engine is an engine. They can tolerate so much RPM's for so much cycles...and then they come apart. Our engines will handle 3800 RPM's for the service life of the engine...but not 4800 and for sure not 5800...you getting the picture? Its like a race car....a pass or two down the track at 8 or 9 thousand RPM's with $80K in high end "Un-Obtanium" parts and they tear it down, and start over. We drive mortal vehicles....and we have to follow the rules of mear-mortals. So bottom line is yes, 4low is ok with manual hubs unlocked on the street if the speed and RPM's is kept reasonable. The auto 4x4 system is trash and should be banished back to the hell it came from....and we all love our Fords!

 

Manual hubs aren't available for these F150s.

 

lkalis- If you still dont understand how to use the 4wd system, read your owners manual....all this is in it.

A little trick if its stubborn getting out of 4WD.. drive in reverse a few feet and then retry.

I have to agree with the manual shift/hub is better than auto debate.. I'd much rather be pulling it into gear than clicking it in and hoping for an idiot light on my dash to go on or off. However, for the mom who needs to get in and out of her driveway in Aspen, the automatic everything is the obvious ticket.

Face it men, they make 4x4's to appeal to a much broader set these days.

 

very true, but they both have their advantages and disadvantages, just for instance, by buddy bottomed his truck out when he was in two wheel drive last thankgiving, when he went to put it in 4x4, he came to find out that a stick had snaped the transfercase cable, if he would have had electronic hubs, this wouldnt have happend..now of course this is not very common and i wish i could put a set of warn hubs on my truck, but the electronic will have to do for now....

P.S. has anybody ever heard of any of the horror stories from jeeps going across rivers, the electronic hubs failing and them floating down the river...