jii99ii
New Member
- Joined
- January 19, 2006
- Messages
- 5
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Tempe, Az
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- '97 sport
If you have an explorer with control trac four wheel drive that seems to be stuck in four wheel drive, this fix might work for you.
My 97 Sport 4x4 (4405 tc) was having these symptoms
-stuck in 4wd
-4x4 indicator lights flashing 6 times
-wheels binding when turning on dry pavement due to being in 4wd.
-transfer case will still clunk into and out of 4 low, but will not get out of 4 high.
The first time this happened I was about 40 minutes from home. I decided to try and drive home slowly to see how it went. After driving for more than about 2 minutes and over 35mph, the problem seemed to go away. I could turn with no binding and it felt like it was driving like normal. But once I was back home and restarted the truck, it came back. So I decided to remove the front drive shaft and deal with the problem later.
After doing some research on EF and other sites, I decided the most likely cause to my problem was a bad hall effect sensor or sensors. I also heard them referred to as speed sensors/hall effect speed sensors/transfer case speed sensor. From what I read my understanding is that there are two of these sensors on the transfer case. They sense the speed of each driveshaft, one on the front, one on the back. When the sensors detect wheel spin they send a message to the computer, and the control trac 4wd kicks in sending some power to the axel that is not slipping.
In my case of having a bad sensor, the computer was getting a signal at all times that wheel spin was detected. So it was constantly in 4wd. I also read that after a certain amount of time or that after going above 35mph (I don’t know which, but that’s really not the point) the computer would know that a sensor must be malfunctioning and it will then turn the 4wd off. This was consistent with my experience of being out of 4wd once I got home.
So with these sensors being the most likely cause I called the dealer to get a price. Not knowing which sensor went bad I got the price for both. One was about $110 and one was about $90. I didn’t want to spend $200 on sensors. So I thought back to reading about the brown wire mod… http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149388
This seemed like it would work in my situation since I could leave the switch in the off position and it would not matter if the computer thought there was wheel spin or not. Well it worked perfectly. I reinstalled the front drive shaft and do not have the problem with the switch off. And I still have 4x4 when I want it. I spent $8 on a switch and got the wire and connectors for free with my autozone rewards card.
If you are having these problems give the mod a try. The sensors are still bad of course but if you want to save some money this is your best bet. Also I thought about doing the mod before I had the problem anyway
My 97 Sport 4x4 (4405 tc) was having these symptoms
-stuck in 4wd
-4x4 indicator lights flashing 6 times
-wheels binding when turning on dry pavement due to being in 4wd.
-transfer case will still clunk into and out of 4 low, but will not get out of 4 high.
The first time this happened I was about 40 minutes from home. I decided to try and drive home slowly to see how it went. After driving for more than about 2 minutes and over 35mph, the problem seemed to go away. I could turn with no binding and it felt like it was driving like normal. But once I was back home and restarted the truck, it came back. So I decided to remove the front drive shaft and deal with the problem later.
After doing some research on EF and other sites, I decided the most likely cause to my problem was a bad hall effect sensor or sensors. I also heard them referred to as speed sensors/hall effect speed sensors/transfer case speed sensor. From what I read my understanding is that there are two of these sensors on the transfer case. They sense the speed of each driveshaft, one on the front, one on the back. When the sensors detect wheel spin they send a message to the computer, and the control trac 4wd kicks in sending some power to the axel that is not slipping.
In my case of having a bad sensor, the computer was getting a signal at all times that wheel spin was detected. So it was constantly in 4wd. I also read that after a certain amount of time or that after going above 35mph (I don’t know which, but that’s really not the point) the computer would know that a sensor must be malfunctioning and it will then turn the 4wd off. This was consistent with my experience of being out of 4wd once I got home.
So with these sensors being the most likely cause I called the dealer to get a price. Not knowing which sensor went bad I got the price for both. One was about $110 and one was about $90. I didn’t want to spend $200 on sensors. So I thought back to reading about the brown wire mod… http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149388
This seemed like it would work in my situation since I could leave the switch in the off position and it would not matter if the computer thought there was wheel spin or not. Well it worked perfectly. I reinstalled the front drive shaft and do not have the problem with the switch off. And I still have 4x4 when I want it. I spent $8 on a switch and got the wire and connectors for free with my autozone rewards card.
If you are having these problems give the mod a try. The sensors are still bad of course but if you want to save some money this is your best bet. Also I thought about doing the mod before I had the problem anyway
