Sudden no wheel drive!?

[chudykGT]

I have a 2008 Ranger Sport 4x4, 3.73 8.8 locked with a lockright. Lately it has been -20 Celsius or colder where I live. I have had a few times where truck is cold and I take a corner and lose power.

I hear a noise that sounds like gears slipping, and at first thought I had the locker not engage because I had just made a turn and pressed the throttle and due to thick cold diff fluid, the locker didn't engage. Then bang, Im going again.

However, another day I had the same thing happen, and came to a creeping stop as regardless of throttle the noise stayed and it sounded like the transfercase, not the diff, was the source of the noise. I braked to bring the rpm down and tried to shift into 4x4 hi (from 2hi), and the t-case just made a grinding groaning noise. I then clicked it back to 2 wheel drive and even just tapping the throttle made the "gear slipping" noise.

So now I was stuck with no power to either drive shaft. I called a buddy for a tow, and at that point, my neighbor, a jeep fan, drove by driving a sport trac he just fixed, and mocked me for the blue oval. He offered to tow me after I explained the problem to him, and we put it back in gear so I could show him what it was doing, and boom, I had rwd again. I tried 4hi and it worked too.

I checked the tranny fluid, and it is fine. I noticed it was damp around the rear tcase output seal, but not wet, and there has been no puddles where it is parked. It spends most of its time parked, as I am a heating technician, and work over time every day because its so ****ing cold right now. So if it was a big leak, the week at a time it spends parked there should be a puddle.

Today it happened again briefly as I made a turn under load and the noise and power loss came back. I stopped, put it in neutral, then back in gear and everything was fine.

Everytime this has happened it has been colder than minus 20 Celsius.

Any ideas where to start looking? I am in 2wd when this happens, and the t-case engages 4hi and 4lo normally other than the one incident.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I had the same happen in my wife's Jeep Liberty. It was also very cold. I had to physically hold the t-case shifter in gear or it would slip. I don't know why this happened as that was the first time ever using the 4wd. My guess in your case if you have a electric shift is that the electric shift motor lube is thick from the cold and preventing a full shift.

Richard

 

[chudykGT]

Yes, that could explain some shifting into 4 problems, but I lose RWD while in 2HI, while driving, not touching the shift selector.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I'm not familiar with the 08 Ranger sport-trac transfer case. Is it AWD capable? Does it have a viscous or plate clutch in the transfer case?

Richard

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

I'm not familiar with the 08 Ranger sport-trac transfer case. Is it AWD capable? Does it have a viscous or plate clutch in the transfer case?

Richard

Ranger Sports are a submodel, like XL, XLT FX4... Explorer Sport-Tracs are the 4dr thing with a tiny pickup box. They never put a AWD T-Case in a Ranger from the factory.

Do you have an electric t-case? Sounds like it might be getting hung up between gears. When you think it is in it could barely be into gear and then pop out on its own... under power would actually hold it in a little, during decell when things shift from driving to being driven there would be a little slack time for them to back out. Makes sense to me.

You can slip the shift motor off the backside of the t-case and manually shift it with vice grips or pliers if you need to get the thing mobile again. The last 1354 I had to work on (11 years ago, wouldn't do a thing) had the different gears cast into the case so you knew where you putting it. There is an article in the tech library about how to clean and relube it... or the hardest part about buying a new shift motor is swiping your card. Three bolts and a couple of wires and you are back in business.

http://www.therangerstation.com/tech_library/TCaseshiftmotor.shtml

I was thinking the indicator light would blink if it was having a problem, never owned an electric case so I can't say for sure though. Maybe since you kinda get it in gear you are close enough for the sensor to read you are in gear.

That is what it smells like to me though barring the potential light blinking deal, otherwise it would be something inside the t-case. They are not very hard to change out either.

I would start by pulling the motor, putting it in 2hi manually and reinstalling the motor and seeing if it would hold into gear with it for sure being set to 2hi. If you could somehow seal the connectors and leave it unplugged to rule out an electrical gremlin that way too.

The worst part about electric t-cases is the timing when they decide to go bad. I swapped out the one on the parent's Explorer so I could get back to school in an unheated garage during a blizzard, my brother had to lay in the mud under his F-150 trying to unstick his shift motor by beating on it with a Cresent wrench... they just never seem to pick a good time to give up.

If it is a manual t-case you might check the shift linkage for wear, there are plastic bushings where the different parts move against each other that can wear out so you won't get it all the way into gear. Since mine had 26 years on the original bushings and still shifted fine until I put in older yet bushings with the engine/trans swap I don't know how plausible bushing wear would be on an '08 though.

 

[chudykGT]

Well its a 2008 sport so therefor it has the electric tcase. I find it weird that it could hardly engage 2 hi but ill have my mechanic check it out while we has it today. Ambient temp not factoring windchill today:
-30 celcius. Im going to work for 16 hours so my old man picked it up this morning. I watched him drive it away and see that my locker isnt locking up properly, another problem in this godforsaken wasteland