Hey all - used to visit here a bunch, ya'll are always helpful. Need some help in understanding what happened the other day with my ol' 2003 SD 6.0 PSD 4x4 auto with ESF.
Cruising around the deer lease with the ESF 4x4 engaged, mainly just to 'exercise' it. Stopped on a downhill slope covered in wet pinestraw. (Truck grill facing downhill) Went to back up/reverse and made NO progress. Only the back wheels were spinning. Drove a short ways to a nearly level spot for a 'running start' (nowhere to turn around) and still, only rear wheels spinning. Truck wanted to slide sideways into brush/saplings on each side. Eventually, I was forced to drive all the way down the hill, break out an axe and machete to cut enough small trees down to turnaround and get a running start UP the hill. This time it seemed that I may have had power to the front wheels (not sure). Got out fine.
Now - here's my question - recently I put some MB aftermarket wheels on the truck and they came with nice chrome center-hub covers. I had never had a need to manually turn the locking hubs on the front wheels, (I use a modded Jeep XJ for most offroad stuff) so I covered the hubs with my new shiny covers (I know, bad idea...) If I get rid of the shiny hub covers up front, exposing my manual hubs, could I turn/engage them in another incident like this and actually have reliable torque and power to my front wheels?

I appreciate any help or responses........

 

that is the way it suppose to work. If the ESOF does not work, get out and manually turn the hubs and it should engage.

You still need to have the switch turned to 4x4 on the dash.

 

The ESOF doesnt work well in reverse. You can engage them, driving forward, but seems they ussually dont lock the hubs properly. So, yes, I would have got out and pulled off the caps and manually engaged them. I had this problem in my driveway once (32 inch snowfall) and couldn't reverse out on ESOF. Manual lock and no problem, except almost ripping off mudflaps.

 

Thanks so much for the help. Those hub-covers are on really tight, and I think the wheel must be removed first to take'em off. Next rotation, I'll remove them so I can access the hubs. Thanks again.