I locked in the factory manual hubs on my 94 F-150 during the last snow and couldn't drive over about 40 mph without feeling like I was going to completely lose control of the truck. The truck has over 143k miles, isn't driven in 4WD much, and I don't know much about 4WD, so I'm having a difficult time figuring out what's going on. Here's some more info:
I can leave the hubs unlocked, shift into 4WD and everything runs fine, even at 60 mph. I'm assuming this means the transfer case, u-joints, etc. are OK. When I lock in the hubs on snowy roads, the truck pulls hard to the left (normally pulls a little to the right) and it feels like the wheels are "out of sync". It's nearly impossible to drive like this. Also, after I had fought it for a couple of miles, it felt like the front left wheel was locking up and it was shaking. Is this an indication of screwed up hubs? Or, could it be some other component, like the transfer case, which only shows up when the hubs are locked in and on the road? I also had the brakes worked on about a month before this happened and they repacked the hubs. Is it likely they did something that's causing this? I checked to make sure the hubs are engaging/disengaging and they appear to be fine. Any suggestions?

 

your best bet is prolly to pull the hubs out clean them make sure there isn't any dirt/water inside before you go rebuilding anything or buying a new axle!

try driving around with them locked...forwards and backwards in 4-hi and 4-lo, something may just be seized and driving it around usually frees it up. a good rule of thumb is run your 4x4 once a month in both hi and lo to keep everything greased!

BTW...welcome to the board

-jason-

 

Thanks for the advice. Anything's worth a shot if it's free, but I hope that fixes it. There's nothing worse than taking something apart, putting it back together again, just to find you have to do it all over again.

 

Your story sounds familiar to mine. Just had fl u-joint, rotors, and pads done. When in 4wdhi, the 1992f150 shows same signs as yours. Hard to drive and feels like the two front wheels are engaging and disengaging randomly. IT crow hops on dry pavement severly. At 35-50 mph it's all over the road.

The mechanic also cleaned my manual hubs, and greased them with White Lithum. I've heard that hubs should NOT be greased, but am wondering.

Also, when taking off from stop and slowing to stop, the truck feels as if the brakes are grabbing. This does not happen in 2wd. Something the mechanic did in the repair has caused some binding somewhere.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

That sounds exactly like what mine was doing. I haven't tested it yet, but I think the spline gear that gets pushed in by the manual locker was reversed. I was looking it over and trying to figure out if somehting was broke, etc., and my maintenance manual (not Chilton, but something similar) showed a picture of the spline. You can get to it by simply taking off the outer cover. The spline has teeth that go all the way out to the edge on one side, and a ring about 1/4" deep before getting to the teeth on the other side. My gear had the ring to the outside, but the picture showed it with the teeth to the outside. So, I reversed them. But, I haven't had a chance to test it yet, so I have no idea if this will help. The guy who did my brakes also put a lot of grease in there. It could be that too much grease is messing up the inner workings, but I don't see how that's possible. My best guess is that the recessed ring on that gear allows some movement in the hub and when it's reversed, you limit that movement.