It's cool. I did mis-state the positions. There are only 6. It is possible for the CDL to be locked/unlocked without the lever being completely "home" and that is what I was thinking of. Life goes on.

Glad you got it apart and its just the linkage that's jazzed up. Depending what part you need I may have it on my cadaver truck still. Otherwise IanR on the CLRC page has the rest of my linkage and I'm not sure he's using it.

 

It looks like the ball/socket mechanism had completely disintegrated.

Please take some pics of what you found. It would be interesting to see. When you say it completely disintegrated, was it from long term degreadation from corrosion or did it somehow shatter?

I know mine was really nasty and had some corrosion present. The way the design is open from below allows all sorts of nasty stuff to get in there. It appeared with mine that the PO must have done some wading and it got wet and nasty from mud/road salt or whatever.

I did replace all of the clevis pins and small clips. There is a pawl with internal splines that I also replaced due to excessive wear on those splines. The more robust pieces I merely cleaned, then reassembled the box and reattached it, however mine still would not engage until I put a socket over the nut on the selector plate and was attempting to loosen it, when suddenly the shifter moved toward the drivers seat and the CDL engaged. I still did not have the dashboard indicator working until I replaced the CDL switch due to the plunger on it being frozen in place from corrosion.

Basically these linkages are not a very good design. They are prone to bind over time which does require opening it up and seeing what is there.

Fish, if you thought my words were an attack upon YOU, you were mistaken. I am sorry You took it that way. It was not that I did not like the words you chose, I just disagreed with what you were saying. I know you were trying to help, however the description you provided was inaccurate. No harm done.

I would caution everyone to avoid using force with this linkage. Either it works smoothly or there is some problem. With the center diff, it is either locked or unlocked, period.

I guess one could say there are infintesimal positions, almost there, not quite there, approaching there (in case you do not realize it, this is an attempt at humor).

The problem with trying to verbally convey information is that if one does not carefully choose the words they use they are not conveying the correct information. And if one omits key information, the message becomes meaningless or even worse erroneous.

"What the hell did he say?"

Keep on Rovering.

 

Your guess is as good as mine. but as you can see, the ball-cup it completley gone.



I found a few pieces of it still in there. This is what led to my confusion on how the shifter worked. There was a positive movement forward and back (low/high). But there was no positive movement left/right UNLESS I first dropped to neutral. If I pushed forward and dropped the CDL to neutral, then I had a positive movement (i.e. I can feel it) left/right which led me to believe that I was locking/unlocking the CDL. There must have been a piece or two in there that was giving me the impression that this thing was working.

When I "jammed" it into gear, it mut have somehow locked and finally broke for good.

I am going to order some parts and pay as well order new pins, bushings, and clips. It is true that each one is a slightly different size? They all have different part numbers.

 

Don't worry, I'm not all butthurt.

 

Your guess is as good as mine. but as you can see, the ball-cup it completley gone.


I think my 10 years of root cause analysis working in a Failure Analysis Lab on the Cruise Missile may have given me a slight advantage when it comes to that.



Often times a good visual inspection of the conditions helps determine what really went wrong.

Here's another picture of the top portion removed, you may be able to replace that portion of yours with a used one if that is all that's wrong with yours.
http://rides.webshots.com/photo/2028...02688643KHCbQq

Please do not misunderstand my statements, just trying to be helpful and learn more about these things to help me keep mine going longer. We all need all the help we can get. Kind of like the old Beatles Song, "I get By with a Little Help From My Friends"

I found out all about the Diff Lock aspects of the shifter when I had mine apart, but there are aspects about the actual shifting from HI to LOW that I did not fully explore due to that portion of mine working correctly.

I am curious to learn what a further tear-down of yours yields regarding the failed parts since mine and yours had similar symptoms but different failure mechanisms.

"What the hell did he just say?" "Big words for a redneck, wonder whar he learnt that stuff?"

 

Have you made any progress with your CDL Dilemma?

 

I manually unlocked the diff and put everything back together minus the linkage. Linkage sitting in the shop....