E-Locker follow-up
FINALLY got this thing wrapped up this weekend! The mod dates back to late June when I decided to do this so it's been in the works for over 4 months, so it's nice to finally be finished.
My retrofit seems to have been a lot more complicated than your typical one, but in retrospect, I'm glad to have done it and finally be finished because now I have a great understanding about how all this shit works.
To recap. I ordered parts to rebuild the used rear diff and modify my axel housing to accept the e-locker diff (from an 08' FJ Cruiser) from
ECGS back in early July. This included:
- a master install kit
- solid pinion spacer
- e-locker gasket
- 2 long studs
Did not get to actually work on it until early late August because of the birth of my daughter. Day one ended taking very long trying to figure out how to rebuild a rear diff for the first time. This bled into a second day that I really didn't account for, to get the axle housing modified. Which led to a rush job, which is never a good thing. So at first assembly, only allowed me to fit 3 of the 4 new studs. So at first drive, not only did the diff leak, but since I didn't secure the harness properly before backing the truck out of the lift, it caught the drive shaft and yanked the connector off... doh!
Took a day off the following week, to fix the housing and reseal the diff.
Ordered some Carling rocker switches from
OTR and a harness from
ORS. Mike, the owner of Offroad Solutions, was great to work with. Their standard lead time on the harnesses is about 3 weeks, but I think mine took about twice that to arrive due to their back log.
When I plugged the harness up and energized the system, it locked the diff once and never did anything after that. Uh oh. Rode around for a couple of days with a spooled rear axle which was a lot of fun... Removed the locker motor and manually unlocked the rear. Started troubleshooting and thought it was a blown fuse, but after replacing it, I still couldn't get the actuator to do anything. So I had to figure out if I smoked the motor or if the harness was wrong. Got a wiring schematic from Mike so that I could understand the circuit better to help me troubleshoot the system. He uses 3 relays and a SPDT switch. Pulled the motor to attempt to perform a bench test this past weekend. Set up a bench circuit with a power supply and relay... Nothing. Tore the motor apart because I this point, my guess was that it over-ran it's limit and smoked it. It didn't smell good in there, but the motor looked perfect. When you disassemble the actual motor portion of the actuator (that drives the worm gear) you'll discover there are some little spring loaded magnets that will go flying. This is
very fun to try to re-assemble. So I attempted to put it back together and re-test it.... still nothing. Then I had a thought that the power supply I was using, while we were getting 12 volts, was not pulling enough amperage to run the motor. It's pretty beefy. So before trashing the motor, I decided to set the test rig up using the truck battery. Didn't really have anything to loose at this point. This actually ran the motor once in one direction and then when I tried to reverse it, it ran a little in the opposite direction before quitting....hmmm. So the motor worked! Sort of... This was actually why I didn't think I had a bad motor to begin with because it had actually actuated once on the truck before quitting. I tore it back apart to discover that one of the two aforementioned spring loaded magnets popped out during re-assembly. Fixed it, tested it and the actuator ran in both directions as it should. Success! So the motor was never bad to begin with. I took it apart thinking it was bad because the power supply couldn't run it. Then I put it back together wrong. Now that I knew I had a good motor, I had to plug it back into the harness and figure out what was going on with it.
Plugging it into the harness, it did not behave as it should. Actually it did exactly the same thing it did the first time I plugged it in. Ran once and died. So after troubleshooting it, I figured out that the limits were actually backwards or swapped, meaning the lock limit was the unlock limit and vice versa, So once it got to one position, it stuck. Once I swapped the limit circuits, it allowed the motor to run to both limits in both directions... but the polarity was wrong for my switch position. Meaning when my rocker was in what I wanted to be in the "locked" position the diff was open and vice versa... This was a simple enough fix. I only needed to reverse to polarity at one of my relays and viola, everything works!
Trimmed the panel a little to fit my OTR switch and added a matching one for my light bar. So not much as far as pics. I guess I should have snapped one of my test rigs and maybe do a little video with a tire up in the air with the diff locked and open.
Anyway, here's a shot of the switches:
Switched on. Blue LED's to match the rest of the interior, but the pic came out horrible:
So in this venture, I learned how to rebuild the diff, modify the axle housing to accept the e-locker 3rd, how the electric motor and actuator work, and how the wiring circuit for it works. It was a major PITA, but man what an awesome learning experience. Now that it's over hopefully I'll get the chance to wheel the piss out of it, and move on to breaking and fixing more shit.