So couple of upkeep items are happening. First off the wiring harness for the CDL lock got packed with snow during a snow storm about a month ago and pushed the motor's wires next to the exhaust causing a direct short in that circuit. Unfortunately, from the factory its a 30amp fused circuit, so the direct short caused the wires to get hot and melt together at the CDL control box, so I had to repair the harness over the transfer case and the wires at the CDL control box in the drivers footwell.
The coolest thing about all of this is that this happened when I was stuck in a snow drift and I was attempting to turn on my 4wd (for those who don't know I'm one of those part-time 4wd guys). When I pushed the button I noticed my volt meter drop from 14.4v to 10v and instantly knew there was a wiring issue, well before all of the wiring went up in smoke the CDL motor was able to move the clutch sleeve (this is the center diff locker for you full-time 4wd guys) nearly into place. How did I know this? well because I heard it grinding away as I engaged drive again. The sleeve was not fully engaged on the splines so it wasn't transferring power to the front axle, it was however making a horrid grinding sound. I eventually was able to limp it to my buddy barn and hotwire the CDL motor to get it to fully disengage so I could drive home.
The sleeve in orange is what I'm talking about
So I pulled everything apart this week expecting a lot of glittery oil and carnage and was actually pleasantly surprised, it wasn't as bad as I was fearing. The clutch sleeve has tapered teeth on one side for engaging the splines on the center differential assembly, which, if I had oriented the sleeve correctly when I did the part-time 4wd conversion, would've likely prevented this whole issue (except for the wiring issue). Since I had installed the sleeve in the wrong orientation the splined gears didn't have the taper on the leading edge that engages with the center diff assembly, so the shift fork and motor were attempting to pull the clutch sleeve into engagement but couldn't. And the act of it sitting in that position grinding away kind of mushroomed the splines making it impossible to engage. The deformations were minor but enough to prevent engagement, so 10 mins with my die grinder and a needle tip and voila.
I hope to put this learning experience behind me forever. What a pain in the asss.
Next, I noticed the 3 wires from the CDL position sensor all had broken insulation where they went into the case and they were only hanging on by a couple of strands, so I replaced them with new wires.
Lastly, I am rebuilding/balancing my driveshafts, replacing my front 3-links heim joints that have worn out over the years, and planning out the return of Air conditioning
running beefed-up OEM
