Hello guys. . . new problem with my 89 150 4X4. I know that auto locking hubs are junk, but heres my delema. They are trying to lock sometimes when I am driving down the road in 2wd. When i come to a stop, I can hear and feel them lock in. I took apart the left hub, the one that 90 percent of the time is making noise, and I can't find out why i would lock on its own. It seems to be a prettys solid design to me. Heres my thought. I had the front driveshaft out a while back for ujoints, and for those unfamiliar with this style, when the front driveshaft is separated at the spline, the female end of the spline and the ujoint connected to it hangs down off of the transfercase. In cold weather, I notices a couple of times that the spline of the front drive shaft would free wheel(assuming because the T-case fluid was cold). I know this because I could hear the spline hit the frame. This was easily cured by tying it off to the frame. SO here is my thought. Perhaps the hubs arent causingthe problem, but the tcase is freewheeling the front drive shaft? Another reason this seems to make sense is because if I drove in 4x4 down a road soI don't have to hear the hubs click, and take it out later, and do the unlocking procedure, they don't try to lock for a long time. As if the T-case fluid is warm, and no longer trying to freewheel the driveshaft. I am going to eventually find a monobeam and warn manual hubs, but I still don't want the axle to spin when they arent' locked in. Seems like a waste to me. So t-case fluid change? bad T-case? What fluid do I use? Thanx all for reading this.
Timothy

 

Which transfer case, manual or automatic transmission? I would definetly change the t-case fluid if you haven't prior to this, recently. Something is telling your hubs to lock in. I have 237,500 + on my automatic hubs and not one problem. If you go manual hubs, don't go cheap, buy Warn Premium hubs.
Tex