Ever since I got my 02, the rear diff housing has been a little crusty and rusty. It was the only bad rust on the truck. About a year ago I decided I'd try and make something out of the old housing and make it look halfway decent. Just a bit of scraping the bad rust off and boom! We've got a pin hole at the top for gear oil to seep out of. The leak was so slow that I barely ever had to add gear oil to the thing, and I checked it often. When this happened I planned on just finding an entire new axle assembly from a junkyard or craigslist. I go to school in Florida, so rust free parts are easy to come by. I ended up talking to a guy I know that builds third gens and has plenty of parts lying around, including a factory 4.10 e-locker that I was able to buy off him. This was great because it meant I wouldn't have to swap my front gears too, and on my budget that was out of the question.
Fast forward to August, I finally have time to clean up everything and swap out the rear axle. Everything went nice and smooth as I took my time to do it right and prevent any rust on the frame and surrounding areas while I was in there. Because I was putting the locker into an 02, there was no body pre-wiring for the locker. I ended up going with a Low Range Off Road wiring harness to simplify things (
https://www.lowrangeoffroad.com/). However, I wasn't able to get the wiring installed before I came down to FL from MD.
Three weeks ago I finally had time to install the wiring. When I installed the axle into the truck I bench tested the e-locker motor and even temporarily hooked up the wiring to the truck to operate it once installed. Everything worked great. Now that I had the truck in FL and the wiring mostly installed, absolutely nothing. The locker wouldn't move at all. I eventually got it to move, but it sounded awful. Then it completely stopped working, mind you with my truck stuck in the locked position. I was able to manually unlock it with the actuator off so that I could drive it in the mean time. Over the past few weeks I've been researching how the locker motor works, and I was finally able to tear it apart and try and rectify my issue. Here's the process I used to diagnose and fix my issue.
Also a side note: I went through every single thread I could find on these, and many of them had very good information but had dead pictures that would have been very important in understanding what you were reading. I want this thread to be a kind of updated version of all of those put together. I am just sharing everything I learned when fixing mine to help others fix theirs in the future.
Diagnosis:
I started by testing the locker motor when installed to the truck using some alligator clips and a 9 volt battery. This thread shows which pins to use:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/tha...-locker.84040/ I could hear the motor trying to do something, but it didn't move at all. At this point I removed the motor and tried the same thing with it out, to see if my issue was something inside the diff that was stuck. There was no difference, and I could move the gear inside the diff using a flat blade very easily, so I was sure the motor was my issue.
I then brought the motor inside and started to disassemble it. I used a combination of threads and videos to guide me, and these two were the most useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN1ZjqLn9bg &
https://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/toyo...r-rebuild.html. After seeing the state of the actuator in the thread I just linked, I almost hoped to find that my motor was corroded on the inside because that seemed like it would be a simple fix. I don't know if I was happy or not to find that my motor, at least the part of it with the large gear, looked brand new inside. This led me to believe that my issue was with the part of the actuator that was the electric motor itself. Many of the threads I read warned not to mess with this part if you could avoid it because there are many small parts that can be a pain to put back together, but this was my only choice and I found some useful tricks that make this job a whole lot easier as long as you have patience.
The electric motor is held on with three Phillips head screws. Be careful when taking this piece off. There are magnets on the inner face of this cover that you can damage if you aren't careful. Just slowly lift it straight off any you should be fine. When I got mine off everything looked very clean and tidy. I was kind of stumped because I didn't know what to look for. This is where my research got more intense. I figured if I learn how this motor works, I can figure out what is wrong with it. I'll try and explain my basic understanding of it here:
Inside the electric motor portion of the actuator are a few key components, mainly the armature and the magnets inside the motor cover, which are pictured in order below:
On the armature, above the spiral gear and below its widest part, there is a copper contact area that two little pieces touch (forgive me I don't know their technical name). These little pieces are spring loaded, as I will show later. The top, widest part of the armature sits in the motor housing cover, in between the four magnets. The top and bottom of the armatures shaft locate it perfectly so that it does not touch these magnets. This is where my problem was. After learning that this is how it worked, I noticed that three of my four magnets were loose. Because they were loose, they must have been magnetizing to the armature which in turn would hold it still, keeping it from spinning. The armature spinning is what spins the gears in the motor itself. The bottom of it is a spiral gear that meshes with the large gear inside the motor, pictured below:
How to fix it:
So no spinning armature means no spinning gear, and no working locker. At this point I know that I need to simply re-fit the magnets and put it all back together. It wasn't this simple for me. The orientation of the magnets in the motor cover is very important. Magnets have north and south poles, and unfortunately I pulled the loose magnets out from the motor cover without taking note of their orientation or marking them. If your magnets are loose, mark them, take pictures, do whatever you need to so that if you take them out you can re-install them correctly. If you already took them out, its not the end of the world by any means. You just have to determine their poles and install them correctly.
My situation was pretty good because one of the magnets was still glued in. If all four of yours are out and you don't know where to put them you may have a harder time. The one still being in made the process a whole lot easier. This is basically what needs to happen:
The magnets need to be equidistant from each other, and their poles need to be alternating between N-S-N-S. I drew a picture to help illustrate this and used colors to show which magnets were which. This method relies on one magnet still being installed correctly, as mine was still glued. If all four are out, you can do some research to determine their poles on google and then follow this method. I don't know if there is more that you would have to determine, but maybe someone can chime in here if there is. Below are the pictures to help figure out where to put the magnets:
(it says "this one is still glued" sorry for the crappy camera work)
So now came time to clean up the housing the magnets go into. I used brake clean on the inside of the housing and I used some QD electric cleaner on the armature and other electric components inside the motor. To glue the magnets back I used some of this JB weld super glue:
I glued two of the magnets in, and that was nice and easy because there was plenty of room to do it. The thing you want to be careful with is when putting the magnet with fresh glue on the back into the housing, you need to make sure that the glue doesn't touch the housing until its in the place you want it to sit (ideally against the bottom of the housing, as far in as you can get it). A trick I found to be useful was sitting the magnet exactly where you want it in the housing, prying it back so that the very bottom of it is still touching and applying the glue then. This ensures the magnet doesn't get stuck in a position you're not happy with. Here's a picture to show what I mean:
Also, once I glued all of the magnets and was happy with their positions I took some more glue and ran it along the edges of the magnets just as a kind of insurance that they'll stay. I did this to the magnet that never actually came out also. I didn't want to pry that one off and re-glue the entire thing because I read they can sometimes break when trying to pry them off. That's not a chance I wanted to take. The glue I used was especially handy with all this because the cap had a brush integrated into it.
Now that the magnets are in, I wanted to put the electric motor part of the actuator back together so that I could test if I had fixed the problem. The hardest part of this is getting the spring loaded pieces that contact the armature in, as I mentioned earlier. I found that some toothpicks were very helpful here. What I did was place the spring in the slot that this piece goes into, and depress it with your finger. Then take the toothpick and use it to slot through the spring and hold it to the back end of its little channel. You can then take your other hand and slot the little piece that is meant to contact the armature in front of the spring. To hold this all together while you do the other side you can take a broken toothpick, or even ziptie the piece from moving. I used the toothpick and you'll see what I mean in the pictures. Once you have both pieces ready you can carefully install the armature into the actuator housing making sure to seat the bottom portion of it in its little groove. You should feel that it is fairly secure and it will almost center itself. You can then remove the toothpick and let the little pieces contact the armature.
(Don't worry that is just die-electric grease in there)
Also don't forget that there should be tiny little balls that go on the top and bottom of the armature, it's what it spins on. Just be careful not to lose these and to make sure you remember to install them.
Now that the armature is installed you need to put the cover with the magnets back on. Because the armature is magnetic, the cover is going to try and lift the armature up as you install it, which would screw up all of your work to install the tiny springs and all. To avoid this I found it helpful to hold the bottom of the armature by the spiral gear with one hand while using the other to place the motor cover. Also take note that the motor cover can only go on one way. There are dimples next to the bolt holes, make sure you match them up before trying to install it.
Here's how I held the armature:
Now that the motor cover is on it's showtime. Use the same method with a 9V battery and alligator clips to test the motor now. In my case, IT WORKED! I was ecstatic! At this point I then took it back apart, thoroughly cleaned the electrical bits with QD electric cleaner and used some QD electric grease on all electric pieces as well to prevent corrosion. With this, just remember that less can be more in a way. I did put a light coating on the magnets and armature, but too much can inhibit the magnets doing their job so remember that. I also put a coating of MP grease on the bottom part of the armature where it contacts the larger gear, and I coated the larger gear also.
Having put everything back together there was just one thing left, and that was to line up the motor so that it was in the locked position. You do this to the motor, and manually do this to the diff itself, and depending if you have stock wiring or not you push in your RR-diff lock button so as to sync up the whole system. This thread explains it much better with pictures than I can:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/...nstall.466058/ Once you do that all you need to do is install it to the diff housing and plug it in!
So, now I have a working locker at the flip of a switch! I learned that turning sightly when engaging helps a ton to get smooth actuation, but I do know that for them to work well you really just gotta make sure to use the damn things. Not a problem for me!
I hope this helps some of you out there understand how this system works and how to find out what's wrong if yours isn't working.
Linear Mode
