I live in South Carolina and don't use my 4 wheel drive very often and heard you should engage it once a month to keep things lubed. Is this right or am I just being paronoid?

Thanks,

Nebraska

 

Prolly not a bad idea, but everytime you turn off the truck and the IWE on the front loose vacuum, the hubs lock up. So they are getting a workout all the time. But to move around the transfercase internals is not a bad idea.

 

My 94 Toyota T-100 said to run it for 30 minutes in 4X4 once a month. When I asked the prior owner (my son-in-law) who had driven it 100,000 miles, he had never done it and it worked fine. There is nothing in the owners manual on my F150 about it. I wouildn't worry about it.

 

Thanks guys! I am going to try and engage it once in a while just to make sure.

Nebraska

 

i lube it up every time i go to play in the mud

 

man thats just wrong lol

 

Everytime I get a chance to drive "off-road", whether its grass or dirt, I engage my 4x4 to lube it all up. There might a be a few months in between uses though. Which leads to my question, Why does it sound like its grinding and give it a little tension when turning the steering wheel(especially lock to lock). I dont wanna tear anything up, but I want to be able to steer without having to worry about how far to turn my wheel.

 

I snorted my dew.

 

Stating the obvious, it's best not to engage it on dry pavement, so do it when its wet out.

 

Um.... Why??

 

When turned, your front wheels are running in two different sized circles. The outer wheel on the big circle, the inner wheel on the little one. When you are locked in 4X4, it's the inner wheel that is trying to turn as fast as the outer wheel, but it is having a hard time doing just that. On dry pavement, the inner wheel will chatter and skuff on the pavement. All this adds strain to the front end components. Just leave the sharp turns to dirt or snow when in 4X4. The same holds true to the rear end with a true positrac. On sharps corners, the inside wheel skuffs and chatters.

 

Thanks for the info, I didn't know that!

 

i chuckle everytime i read that

 

Go 2wd and leave your worries behind ;D

 

We have an open dif up front, so it is more the difference between the front wheel speed and rear wheel speed which places the strain on the transfer case.