I have developed the dreaded IWE grinding on my '04 F150. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the money right now to do the repair, and I am going on vacation in two weeks.

I need to drive the truck approx 2500 miles for vacation pulling a boat and I am thinking of removing the vacuum lines from both front IWE's. As long as the transfer case is not engaged, would this be OK? I have the floor shifter for the transfer case, but I think that's still electrically engaged (i.e. the shifter is just fake eye candy).

Thanks, guys!

 

I'd pull the front driveshaft to be safe.

 

Not quite. The problem is that it takes vacuum to disengage the front hubs. Good possibility that they will be grinding away, and your front axles will always be turning, with the possibility of binding on tight turns.

 

Yeah, that was my plan is to have them engaged full time, but not driven through the transfer case. Isn't there a front differential? Why would they bind?

 

if you pull the vacuum lines you will be in 4 wheel drive, with no power to the front wheels, meaning you have limited slip on the front wheels. when you corner it will scrub your tires. its cheaper to fix it, epically if you do it yourself.

 

Why would they scrub? The front diff is an open diff, not LS.

 

ok, the easy thing to do is pull the vacuum lines from the iwe vacuum sol on the fire wall and plug these with a screw.
this will prevent loss of vacuum from the eng and prevent water from getting into the lines, if you pull the vacuum lines off the hubs you will let debte get into them and you will have much more problems to deal with

yes the hubs will lock in, no you should not have any problems driving around other then very bad gas milage (i've been driving like this for about 4 days) and have not had a single problem

ok - get the new sol vavle with the rain gaurd and put it in it took me 5 min to do
also found 3 vacuum line leaks all under the hood

behind the throtle body the line going to the brake booster is a soft hose and it was colllasped in the metal spring clip pinching it shut also the first piece of hard plastic tube coming off of the iwe sol had a hole in it (used a piece of fish tank air line as a temp fix

vacuum brake bleeder used to test hubs and lines held a 20ng vacuum for over 15 min so there were no leaks in the lines or hubs when i was done

dealer tried to give me the old one with no rain gaurd and tell me the new one did not exist so after i showed him ford TSB and a picture of the new one and insisted on talking to the service manager i ended up getting the rain gaurd piece for only $30