Bad day today. Dad came up to help me move my wife's '65 Mustang that I'm restoring. He came in his 2001 F-250 SuperCrew 7.3 4WD, brought his trailer. To line up the trailer with the Mustang, he had to turn up a slick hill. His 4WD is the dial on the dash, not stick in the floor. When he turned up the hill, the truck started spinning and sliding down, so he stopped and put it in 4WD. The light came on the dash, but the transfer case never engaged, then the truck slid down the hill, trailer jack-knifed, and the corner of the trailer got into the rear of the body panel behind the fender. After that, we tried to manually turn the hubs to 'lock' (out of 'auto') - we couldn't - they were stuck. After that, we decided to cut our losses. We unhooked the trailer, got the SD out of the way, hooked the trusty '78 F-150 4WD to the trailer, left it in 2WD, and loaded the Mustang. My questions:

Why is the 4WD on Dad's F-250 not engaging after turning the dial to 4WD?
What should we check?
Why can't we manually lock the hubs? (why are they stuck?)

His truck has about 110K miles, 4WD is not used very often (almost never). Thanks.

 

sorry to hear about your headache.you probably have a vacuum leak. i never did like the esof set up.

 

Hubs are vacuum actuated, needs about 10 feet rolling space to engage automatically. Your manual locks are probably just stuck, road grime or whatever, they need cleaning and lubricating. You may also need to recheck the operation and see if they are locking at all, you may have a problem that need to be addressed with the auto locking system.

 

I crawled under it and it looks like there is one vacuum hose to the transfer case. Is it likely this hose with the vacuum leak, or any vacuum leak? What's the best way to unstick/free up the hubs? Dad's saying he's going to take it to the dealer on Monday. I just want to do what I can before they might try to replace some things unnecessarily.

 

Go to the 7.3 forum and do a search on esof and Guzzle's R&R of the hubs. I did mine a year ago and that helped. Also, I try to anticipate when I need 4x4 so it is on when needed. I know that isn't always possible, but as noted above, the truck usually needs to be moving a little to engage the ESOF(auto) hubs.

There is also a vacuum hose that goes to each front wheel hub to engage the hubs.

Ford dealer will probably want to replace both of the front hubs with new. If he doesn't use the 4x4 much and you guys are handy with tools, I'd try fixing the current hubs. Also, it helps to use the 4x4 on a regular basis. I try to use mine for a little bit every month. It nothing else just engage it and drive half a mile or so. Just be careful and not turn sharp on dry pavement with the 4x4 engaged.

 

Check for vacuum present and 4 wheel engaged, my bet is turn it on, check to make sure it is engaged. Then just open up the hubs and clean and lubricate everything with bearing grease. It really is a easy fix, do not be afraid of it. fred_sheffield@hotmail.com if you need links to pictures or instructions. I would be glad to help if you need it.

 

It sure is nice to have manual hubs and a stick to shift the wifey would disagree LOL good luck with the stang., i thought the story was going much worse.

 

Thank's for all of the help. We'll check everything out. It could have been a lot worse, but it's always worse to me when somebody else's truck (instead of mine) gets messed up doing something for me. He's wanted a PowerStroke 7.3 for a long time, got this one in '03, and has taken super care of it. The 4WD is an aggrevation, while the sheet metal damage sucks.

 

Hope the mustang is okay!

 

Mustang's good - just need time and money to get it done.