Please teach me the intricacies of automatic Ford hub.

The 4wd system on the '94 Ranger does not engage. Today I set out to find out why. Things I've found so far include: transfer case actuator motor engages and turns 90 degrees. But then turns back to it's "rest" position. When 4wd engages it spins the front drive shaft and the front axle but the hubs do not engage. I removed the drivers side wheel and outer hub to find that the "grease" is more solid than lubricating so I started cleaning it out but stopped at this point. I think I need a special great big socket to remove the front hub nut to properly clean and regrease everything. But at this point I don't even know if the hubs work. How tough is a transfer to manually locking hubs? And any ideas about the 4wd actuator? At no time does the light come on saying that 4wd is engaged so I'm not sure where to go with it.

Thanks in advance all.

I ran into this recently trying to help my wife's son on his Ranger. Long story short we or the shop we ended up taking it to could not get the RF hub off. It required replacing the whole hub. I still don't understand what had it jammed so badly. I think it was rust. The LF came apart with some coaxing. Good luck with yours.

Didn't the Rangers, B-IIs and Early Exploders have a manual hub option? Find one of those in the JY and take the hubs.

If they aren't seized, failure of the hubs is almost always a vacuum issue. However, for less than $200 you can convert it to Warn manual locking hubs which make things much nicer.

Nope, air blows wherever I tell it too. A/C OTOH doesn't blow cold but that seems to be due to the fact that the compressor isn't kicking on, sigh.

On the F150 I used to have, the vacuum was used to keep the hubs disengaged. So a vacuum leak (almost always at the hub itself) would result in all kinds of weird noises at certain engine load -- usually when it was shifting, resulting in unnecessary transmission disassembly. Dumb design.

In reply to Datsun1500:

Hmm, I might have to look into capping those vacuum hoses on our '99 f-250. It is somewhat lazy when changing over the climate controls.

Every one should read that article.

No vacuum to the hubs, strictly mechanical.

I thought I new how they worked but some of the rhetoric was making me wonder if I had missed something.

The Ranger automatic hub system is strictly mechanical. Drive torque on the axles forces the system to cam out and engage the splines.

You should not need to remove the wheel hub, just the external locking portion. You should be plenty good with cleaning all the solidified gunk out and putting real live grease in after verifying that everything can move freely.

The late model F250 vacuum-lock systems are a whole different matter.

It's old enough that the Pulse Vacuum Hublock system (which operates the hubs like a vacuum operated clicky pen, by the way) hadn't come out yet. It's a lighter duty version of the F-150 all mechanical auto hubs, which were a piece of E36 M3 when they were brand new. They were so good on my '96 F-150, in fact, that the first time the original owner tried to use them, they came apart, and the warranty repair was to install manual hubs.

Also, when they are working properly, they must disengage and reengage when going from forward to reverse and back, so if you're trying to get unstuck by moving back and forth, they're berkeleying you each way.

Manual conversion is the way to go. You've gotta get out sometimes, but at least you know when you're in or out.

Bringing this back.

Last night I took apart the transfer case actuator to find that the little copper "fingers" that tell the computerized brain where it's located were curled up and bent. Cleaned, straightened and reassembled everything and it works perfectly engaging the front drive shaft.

The hubs which I cleaned (but didn't disassemble) and lubed with ATF still do not engage (yet). Drove the truck to work today so maybe some heat and circulation will get things moving again.

This truck lived it's entire life in Florida where 4wd is a novelty and never, ever engaged so getting things working again can be a gradual process.