Manual Hubs

[~Ben~]

If anyone remembers my topic about my 4wd no longer working (I got stuck in my own ditch because of it), well I just got it fixed yesterday. But instead of getting new Automatic Hubs (which would have cost more), I got the Manual Hubs for my car. I pretty much know how they work (pretty simple really), but I did have 2 questions concerning them.

 

 

1. If I were parked and somehow one of my Hubs was locked, but the other one wasn't, what would it do to my car when I started to drive off? Chances are, I wouldn't make this mistake but it is possible for someone else to come along and mess around with my lockers and make one of them locked. Could this potentially break my axle or parts of it? I wouldn't think locking only one hub on pavement would be a good thing...

 

2. Now that I have manual hubs, I was wondering if I now have the capability to lock only one side of my front wheels (by locking only one hub) when in a situation where it'd be better to have one wheel locked (one with better traction) and leave the other unlocked (one that's stuck in mud with no traction). I know there are lockers out there that can lock down specific wheels to give the best traction, but I wasn't sure if these Manual Hubs have the same benefits. I really hope they do as that would be a huge help when off roading...

 

 

And if anyone has any other information about Manual Hubs (their experiences, tips and things that could go wrong with them), I wouldn't mind reading it as well. I don't really wanna test them out until I know everything I need to know.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Ben

[sandor]

AFAIK, driving around with your hubs locked, or one hub locked, has no ill affects on dry pavement as long as you are in 2WD mode. The hubs just lock the CV axel to your hub, so the axel (or axels if both are locked) will spin while the vehicle is in motion, where they would not normally if the hubs were unlocked. The problem comes when you have a hub or both hubs locked + 4WD + dry pavement...then you could do damage.

 

For your second question, 4WD + locking one hub on the trail wouldn't break anything, but the front end would have next to no propulsion. Unless you have a locker, which I beleive you don't, the differential splits the power, and generally the wheel with less resistance gets more. If one hub is not locked, that side will have next to no resistance (cause it's not turning the wheel, it's free-wheeling), and get most of the power. The wheel with the hub that is locked will do nothing, so it has the opposite affect to what you were looking for.

[TrailChaser]

If you forget to unlock a hub you will probably know somethings not right when you get up around the 55-60mph mark. The only reason you'd know somethings not right is because the cv's aren't balanced(at least mine aren't) so they vibrate pretty bad at high speeds. I don't think it would hurt anything as long as you didn't put thousands of miles on it like that. Then it would just hurt you wallet(in gas) and maybe rip a boot.

 

If you want to lock just one tire to make the other one power the truck(one that's spinning in the mud) then you need what they call line lockers. It's basically a brake lock. You install it on the brake lines. Then when you press the brake you lock in whatever tire is spinning and unlock it when you get traction again.

 

I get kinda sick of hearing that driving your truck in 4wd on pavement will break something.

99% of the time you will be fine driving on pavement, rocks, ect with your truck in 4wd. If you break something in the system because you were driving in 4wd on the pavement that piece probably needed to be replaced anyway.

Think about climbing a 50deg incline on decaying granite. You have to use 4wd, and you can bet your truck will have more traction than on pavement. I'll drive around in 4wl all day at the offroad park with no problems and most of that driving is on decaying granite where the traction is better than on pavement. I don't drive my truck around on pavement in 4wd because that's just not a smart thing to do and it's hard it steer. I do however know I CAN without worrying about breaking stuff if I need to.

 

 

So what ended up being wrong with your auto hubs?

[~Ben~]

Thanks for the info guys, I figured it was something else I needed to lock individual wheels. And good to know that locking only one (if I somehow accidentally do that) won't hurt the truck.

 

As for my old Auto's, all I really know is that the Hub had somehow stripped (or one of the pieces on the hub) so when the axle was turning, the hub wasn't connected to it to make the wheel turn. Apparently it was the one on the passenger side, so it didn't have anything to do with my ripped CV boot that I had replaced earlier.