bonez

Before anyone starts their rant about why this is a horrible idea, I'll just let you know that this would be a very temporary situation.

I have already purchased all of the parts that I need to re-gear my truck, but the problem is that the front ring/pinion is likely out of stock until sometime in June. I need my truck re-geared to be able to safely pull my boat without blowing my tranny. So what I am contemplating is having my new 4.56's installed in the rear end and not using 4x4 until after I receive the rest of my front end parts and can get them installed.

Has anyone ever safely done this? Could I possible have something disconnected in the front diff to eliminate the accidental 4x4 engagement? Just looking for ideas/opinions on if I could use this solution temporarily until I get the rest of my parts.

zimmer0

iTrader: (1)

Yes you can do what you have proposed. I would pull the front drive shaft or disconnect the 4wd switch just to be safe.

uzikaduzi

pulling the front drive shaft is good advice but why disconnect the 4wd switch? if you put it in 4wd without the front drive shaft it will just engage the front gears in the transfer case that are no longer connected to the front axle and lock in your hub actuators. I could be missing something but it seems like just one more thing to hook back up when you re-gear the front.

mike.h20

He was just saying do one OR the other. Good precautionary measures so you don't accidentally mess up anything

uzikaduzi

didn't see the "OR" sorry about that.

bonez

Pulling the front drive shaft was something I had in mind and it's good to see consensus. With as common as IWE solenoid problems are, I would hate to have one of them (or both) go bad and engage 4x4 unexpectedly, or just hit the switch by mistake. I know what kind of problems it can cause when you have different ratios engaged and I don't want anything to do with that. At the same time, I really need to get the gears in it since boating season is upon the horizon.

techrep

iTrader: (1)

Just disable the 4WD selector and done...why even mess with the drive shaft.

uzikaduzi

this is likely being extremely very overly cautious but with the drive shaft taken out, you know for certain that nothing can cause an issue with having different gears in the front. I'm not sure on the specifics on how the switch communicates to the transfer case motor but I imagine in some very unlikely bizarre situation, it's possible that motor could get a signal to engage 4wd other than through the switch?... that might not even be possible in any way but i'd feel better with the drive shaft out since it's just a few bolts and the guy doing the gears would likely put it back in for free.

bobkyle2

Pull the front drive shaft for sure..

bonez

If you do this and then you had an IWE solenoid go out, what would happen then? Wouldn't 4x4 be engaged at this point?