A few weeks ago I had to pull a heavy trailer out of some deep grass and I needed to engage 4lo. Much to my surprise, the transfer case wouldnt engage; when I pressed 4lo nothing happened. No blinky light, no click, nothing. Trying to shift to 4hi, the light blinked, clicked, then shifted back to 2hi. (apparently a common symptom, as I later found out). Eventually, I pressed the 4hi button, shut off the truck, and when I started her back up again, viola, 4hi. Long story short, I pulled the trailer out and made a note to investigate, which I did, by searching the forums here (of course). The consensus seemed to be that people with similar problems were having difficulties with the vacuum portion of the transfer case shifter, but I never got around to further troubleshooting the problem until a few days ago, when I began fiddling with the 4wd again. At first the same thing was happening; 4hi would blink, click, nothing, back to 2hi. 4lo didnt even blink. After a few minutes, however, I got her to shift into 4hi by pressing and holding the 4lo button while pressing 4hi. Now, however, it wouldnt shift back to 2wd. After some more experimentation, I actually broke the 2hi button off and it fell off into the dashboard. Crap.

Stuck in 4hi, I drive around for about a day because I dont have time to take the dash apart (I didnt realize it was actually very simple ). After I get home again, I pop the dash off and discover that the reason the electric shift was acting screwy was because the plastic front of the 2hi button was jammed against the solenoid, constantly pressing it down. I removed the entire front of the 4wd panel and now its ugly as heck but everything works perfectly.

Just thought Id post this; a lot of people seem to have problems with their 4wd but Ive never heard this particular one.

 

wow, good story, and im glad you fixed it. Mines hasent been working since the end of winter......im yet to really look into it.

anyone know how many fuses their are in the 4x4 system, i saw one in the fuse panel but none under the hood. hvac works fine, and no weird idle, so i want to rule a vacuum problem. guessing its either a fuse or selenoid. mine wont even blink anymore, it just stays in 4hi.