4wd stuck

[Dave the Detailer Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close Dave the Detailer]

G'day,

My 97' Prado Centre Diff Lock wont engage and the dash light wont come on.

It is unrego and for use on my property only and is useless now it doesn't work. I don't care even if there is a way to constantly have the CDL locked all the time somehow.

Thanks.

[Darran K Member Find all posts View Profile Close Darran K]

Maybe the selector to the gear box has come undone/ sloppy and is not moving far enough to select low range.

[Jon Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Jon]

Had a similar problem.
Turned out to be the actuator switch on the side of the gearbox.
Needed a largish spanner to remove & replace

[mal58 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close mal58]

In the 97 Prado, selection of HL or LL is purely mechanical.
I had this happen when mine only had 50k on it.
Turned out to be that the selector fork had become disengaged from the mechanism in the transfer case.
This can be fixed in the car by taking out the centre console and undoing the cover off the top of the gear box and re-aligning the selector rings in the gearbox.
I was told this is easy to do, but i never did it myself as the dealer did it under warranty.
I am sure if you search the internet you will find the instructions showing what you have to do as it occasionally happens to the 90 series prados.

Something I found (actually I posted it to another group years ago),

If you are reasonably confident you can fix it yourself. The following instructions are from the Prado Yahoo group found at,

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/90series

The instructions are for an Auto, but they equally apply to a manual.

To get to the problem you need to :
> 1. Remove the selector - and this means removing pretty much all of
> the console - with auto anyway.
> 2. Then disconnect the gearbox selector arm (auto) under the car
> 3. This will allow you to remove the plate which covers the gearbox
> opening in the floor.
> 4. With this off you can remove the selector lever by slipping the
> circlip off the top and lifting the selector lever out of the case.
>
> Up to this point, the Gregories manual is not too bad if you have
> one.
>
> Now that you have everything apart, you may be able to see the
> problem (if it's the same problem I had). Looking down inside the
> hole in the top (about 25mm dia) there are 2 selectors inside the
> case with yokes on them where the bottom of the selector arm
locates
> They slide fwd and back as you select H-L,etc. Some how - and I'm
> not sure how - they had moved into a position such that the RHS one
> which locks the transfer case was in the original "unlocked"
> position (fwd) but the bottom of the seclector arm had slotted into
> the yoke on the LHS which selects H-L.
>
> To correct things, you should be able to the slide the yokes fwd
and
> back with something like a screw driver working through the hole in
> the top. When they are aligned together you can easily reassemble
> things.
>
> One thing to be aware of is that as you finally refit the selector
> lever, make sure that the funny shaped spring inside the top of the
> transfer case is to the left of the bottom of the selector arm as
> you slide it back into the transfer case. This will mean that the
> knob on top of the selector will tend to spring to the left when
> everything is reassembled.
>
> After that just bolt everything back together that you took off.

[Radix Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Radix]

Thanks so much mal58!

Mine got stuck on a severly corrugated road as I moved from HH to HL. The transfer case did not go into "Lock", but did get the lever stuck in the lock (HL) position! I was very luck it did not go into lock as this would have given me much grief (wind up) on the next section of bitumen.

Followed the instuctions as you gave them, and indeed the rods were in the wrong position. (see pic)



Easily slid back with a screw driver, reassembled gear lever and bob's my uncle! Saved me a trip to the mechanic.

This is for a manual 3.4l '97