Brad Clayton Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Anybody had the pleasure of working on one of these magnificent machines in the days of old? I forgot all about them until I moved to the land where automotive products will not die. This bad boy happens to be a 1995 4.0L A4LD AWD, 15 inch alloy wheels, extended wagon.....jealous yet? Anywho, for some reason it keeps breaking left front axles. I didn't think these things had enough umph to break anything but this guy is on his 4th halfshaft. I get the vehicle and can't find anything out of the ordinary. I did however notice some peculiarities. First I will say, I have no idea how the engineer who signed off on this design gets any sleep at night. With the left front axle disengaged from the front dif, the park function in the transmission is disabled. It seems that the planetary setup in the transfer case is responsible for transferring the park function. Remove front driveshaft, or pull a rear axle and you can roll it around in park all day. Take a perfectly good working vehicle and park the front wheels on plastic lunch trays while on a hill and that bad boy will roll to the bottom of said hill. The trans output shaft is splined to the t-cases planetary carrier and when locked in park forces the front and rear driveshafts to try and turn in opposite directions if it tries to roll, creating the illusion of being in "park". Well, we are going to try and get a Ford axle from a salvage yard and compare it to these crappy shafts from Advanced Auto and go from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktmlew Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Rear gear been replaced with wrong ratio? I would expect that to blow the transfer case up instead but who knows? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmorris Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 That whole park thing is pretty stupid isn't it. Remove anything and all you can do is push it because you lose all transmission output as well. There is a tool supplied by Ford that replaces the AWD module and locks up the t-case so you can remove the front driveshaft for certain roadtests. The first dealership I woked at, the tool ended up going home with the customer and never came back. I have see quite a few with t-case concerns, but never front axle issues. Maybe have it sent out to a body shop, could be a body alignment concern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrbudge Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Tire mismatch sticks in my mind with one of these, although they would bang like crazy I have never seen a halfshaft break. I don't remember a tool to bypass the module, but I just jumpered a couple of wires in the plug when required, don't recall which ones though. You can also just disconnect the module and drive it if required, as long as all axles are attached. Quadra Trac Jeeps acted the same if a driveshaft broke. We had a Grand Cherokee with a 401 as a snow plow, and boy would it plow, until the front driveshaft broke (which happened regularly), then it would just stop. Put in 4wdlock to drive into the shop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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