Hi, I've been test driving some F150's looking for something to tow a ski boat short distances. I'm shopping in the 10-15 year old market because of price.

I've run into the same issue on a couple trucks and wanted to see if it's user error or a problem with transmission or transfer case. I believe both trucks I had this problem with were 4door extended cab 5.4L work trucks. Anyways both are automatic transmission but with the manual shifter for 2H, 4H and 4L. One is a 2001 and the other a 1998.

With both trucks I would shift into neutral to engage 4W high or low, then shift the truck into Drive or Reverse alternately to test the tranny (in gravel of course). The problem would arise when I had it in 4W and would try to go from Drive to Reverse or vice versa. The 4WD would occasionally pop out into Neutral when I shifted. To get it back into ANY mode, 4W Low, 4W High or even 2W High I would have to grind the gears. Even turning off the truck to pop it in didn't seem to work. Is this me or is it the truck(s)? Thanks in advance for any rules of thumb! I'm certainly not shopping for something that's going to need a transfer case or tranny anytime soon! And it seems like that may be the case with these two. I wouldn't bother asking on these forums but since it happened twice with different trucks I thought it might be me.

Drewduck