I lost 4WD almost 2 months ago... along with my G80 being out, it's hampered my offroad play considerably.
My parts finally came to rebuild my disconnect, and I decided to try to improve it's future reliability somewhat.
Here's what my disconnect looked like fresh off the truck... not pretty. My outer two bearings are pretty much nonexistent.
The inside grease is wet, but very black.
My fork is toast. The pin sheared off. I suspected this had happened since one time when engaging 4WD, I heard a loud metallic clank from the front end.
My outer case also showed some signs of wear. Amazingly, the races themselves were in good shape.
Despite all the carnage, the bearing and teeth on my gears looked good, and nothing else had any physical damage.
Rather than replace my fork, I opted remove the fork completely. Instead I welded the engagement collar to the outside gear. Here is a picture.
I simply tacked the collar in 4 places to the gear. The welds are simply to hold the collar in place. The collar still bears the torque from the front diff. I did not weld the inner gear. The reason for this is that there is a (very) small amount of play in the whole assembly. If I tacked both gears to the collar and everything was not perfectly aligned it could introduce a vibration into the system which would stress the bearings.
Here's the inner gear sitting in the assembly. The picture exaggerates the amount of the teeth sticking out of the collar. There is only about 1/16th of an inch.
I had a small amount of spatter on one of my welds. I hit the assembly with a wire wheel to remove it. You don't want any spatter falling off later inside the disconnect, or any imperfections on your bearing surfaces.
A well greased disconnect ready to go back together.
Ready to install on the truck!
The stepper motor still moves in and out and reports back to the ECM, so no Service 4WD lights. Feels nice to have 4WD back...
) Or you can just post a link where I can find a post on that. Thanks!!
