transfer case stuck!

[cah359]

So saturday the transfer case on my 99 explorer decided to stick i 4lo and wont come out and is limiting speed to only 35mph!!! i tried taking out the front driveshaft, disconnecting the front hubs and unhooking everything from the transfer case but nothing seems to work. its stuck in 4lo and needs to come out. if there is any one who can offer up some advise on what to do it would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[dkchrist]

you may need to pull the motor of the transfer case so you can actuate the case search for the transfer case motor rebuild on how to do it.

 

[jwrezz]

If you take the motor off, I believe there is a way to manually change it back, but I'm sure it's a PITA. Actually if it's cold where you are and you've had alot of snow or ice, mine did the same thing after being stuck in a deep snow drift over nite. After I let it run for a while, and things thawed out, the motor worked again, and shifted out. Also, some times a little "percussive maintenance" has been known to free that thing up. ie a little tap from the hammer. Good luck!

 

[jwrezz]

Oops, just saw you're from CA. I know things were cold out there, don't know if Riverside is any where near that, but I doubt you're motor's stuck because of ice!

 

[gijoecam]

First things first: Were you stopped, in neutral, with your foot on the brakes?

How, exactly, did you disconnect the front hubs?

There are a few ways around it... the easiest would be to pull the shift motor off and manually turn the shift shaft back to the 4high position. That at least puts you back into high range. Then, the problem is to determine why the motor didn't shift back to high range. Could be a bad switch, a weak motor, a bad contact plate, bad TCSrelay, bad signals going to or from the GEM, or some other gremlin. You'll need to do some electrical troubleshooting to pin it down.

-Joe

 

[cah359]

thanks alot for your help guys. i ended up pulling the motor off and shifted it manually. when i have time this week ill figure out exactly what the problem is. thanks