Stuck in 4WD, is this common?

I live in the boonies and use 4WD every day when going to work, 5 miles down and 5 miles up a tight, washboard, gravel logging road. The 07 Tacoma has 85k miles on it now.

Wednesday, for the first time ever, it got stuck in 4WD and would not switch back to 2WD. I tried backing up shifting into neutral, shifting into 4WD LO, you name it and it would not come out of 4WD.

A search turned up a thread here where someone recommended turning the truck off and back on and it might start working. So I went out and restarted the truck and it did indeed switch back to 2WD.

However, my faith in the truck has been shaken. With winter here I don't want to be without reliable 4WD. My question is.. is this a common quirk that happens sometimes or is it a bad omen of an expensive repair to come?

The thread I read mentioned a 4WD actuator repair could cost $2500 to fix and if that's the case maybe it's time to trade the truck in.

Anyone have experience with this problem?

 

I have had three 4WD Tacomas ('01, '05, '10) with a combined mileage of 271,000 miles... and NEVER had it fail to get into or out of 4WD... Now, I use it a lot... and I have all the recommended services done on time. Only the rear locker sometimes is hard to get to engage... on all three... but the 2010 has A-TRAC, so the rear locker really isn't so important anymore.

 

Thanks for the response. All services have been done on schedule and at 30k miles the transfer case and rear diff were changed to synthetic as well. No locker on this truck. Guess it's time to pony up for a service manual to see what I might be in for.

 

Hey, thanks a lot for going to the trouble to post the links! Very helpful!

 

Was the truck in 4wd or the light was showing 4wd?
If you turned off and on and it went away most likely its a switch that tells ECU truck is in 4wd.

 

That might have been me.
Mine's been weird since day one.

Sometimes it's fine and sometimes it hangs.
It's my first electric shifter so I thought it was the nature of the beast.

 

I'm sure it was in 4wd. I noticed the problem when the steering bound up while turning into the driveway after it was switched back to 2wd. After the binding I looked down to see the 4wd light on.

 

I had that happen to me on a 07 I had.I had driven over 100 miles on snow covered road and when I put it in 2WD it stayed in 4WD.I continued for about 75 miles on wet road until I got home.When I parked in the driveway and shut the engine off I decided to restart it and when I did it went right onto 2WD.If I had known this I would have stopped along the road and shut it off and restarted to reset it instead of driving in 4Wd when I should not have.It did not hurt it and it never did that again.Just try shutting it off and restarting it.

 

My 2006 was the first Toyota 4WD Truck (87, 90, 95, 04, 06) to fail me in 4WD.
Dealer replaced the actuator @ 16k miles under warranty.
It was like minute it worked, the next it didn't. I went a few weeks before bringing it in.
It was like a $350-375 part from the repair order.
After that it worked fine until I traded it in & it was used a lot as well.

 

I've had it do that I think once.

 

The 4WD switch (don't know why Toyota wanted a dinky little switch) has always been a bit finicky for me and I've had it stay in 4WD a couple times even when I switch. I've never had it truly stuck in 4WD because all I had to do was play with it for a minute and switch to neutral, try again, and such.

-- Matt --

 

Its because your truck doesn't have ATRAC. The Tacoma is telling you to trade it in and get ATRAC equipped Tacoma.

 

complexity = less reliability = more $$$

 

FYI: was doing some wheeling today and when I tried to switch out of 4lo it just beeped at me... tried everything I could think of, ended up driving it all the way home in 4lo.

Also, I could not get it out of park without pushing in the little button, the gear selector indicator on the dash was not showing anything, and my turn signals were not working.

As it turns out the IG1 fuse under the dash(#32) blew. It is for the Back-up lights, air conditioning system, passenger airbag manual on-off switch, and SHIFT LOCK SYSTEM.

What happened is I must have shorted out the back-up light circuit at the already broken trailer harness when I dragged it on a nice drop-off.

I hope this helps someone out of a jam... Driving home in 4LO for 10 miles sucked!

 

I have a 2012 TRD CrewCab 6'bed Tacoma. Twice in the last month the 4wd did not fully disengage. The dashboard light went off each time but upon making slow turns i heard/felt the binding rumbling. 2hi to 4hi and vice versa should be able to be done on the fly in mine. When shifting to and fro 4lo it needs to be in N or P. In my 2004 Tundra you needed to drive in reverse to unlock the hubs. For now on I switch only with the truck at a standstill in neutral, then I drive in reverse 10-20 yards. This seems to be the process for mine. Hopefully no damage was done. One time i drove only a few miles before noticing the problem but the second time was near 15 miles on dry road before noticing.
Please comment if you have knowledge on this.

 

Probably one of the two actuators. There is one on the transfer case and one on the front diff. My guess is it's the one on the front diff, because the sensors for the lights are in the T-case. I had some success taking mine out and cleaning it. Condensation gets trapped in them forming a yellow sludge for some reason, and that sludge corrodes the terminals. Pretty sure it's just water vapor.

 

Has happened to me once, the 4wd disengaged suddenly a minute or two after the light went off, with a metallic "bang". I'm pretty sure in my case what happened was- my steering wheel was at full lock, and I was making a turn in some gravel. I suspect the actuator "released", but the drivetrain was bound up and the system didn't actually mechanically release until I had jiggled the truck around and temporarily released the bound-up components of the drivetrain.

However, you say that it stayed in 4Hi for you even while driving straight for a while, so this probably doesn't apply to you.

 

I have the same prob. It works to go into 4 hi but wont go into 4 lo at all. light blinks(4wd light, not the lo) have to turn off and to unengae.

 

This is what I found to be the most common issue. I got stuck in 4x4 yesterday while doing a little wheeling in tge snow. Luckily I was in 4hi so I was able to get home and tinker with a few things, after trying the simple things...
-Putting in reverse, then switching to 1st quick wgile turning the wheel etc.
- 20amp Fuse good, disconnected battery
- Tapped the rear actuator while truck was running (they can get stuck sometimes and this is a quick fix)
- Unplugged everything
And in doing so I noticed the Vacuum hose on the rear actuator (the one on the Tcase) was dry rotted and was not connected. Some water had gotten into the actuator and was disrupting the currency. This same thing will happen with the front but I got lucky.
As the above comment says, I just took it apart and wiped out all the yellow gunk built up. Removed some currosion with a little drimmel tip and dried her out. When putting it back together I had not marked the position so I found a diagram on another thread that helped (although it was for a Tundra I believe) the positioning is apparently the same. Although it was stuck in 4x4 I had the stick engaged in the 2wd position (button out on mine). I was suprised when I got it back together when going forward and reverse no disengage sound from the Tcase but I took a little drive and it was in 2wd. I thought I would have to take the whole actuator back off to manually force the Tcase into 2wd then re-assemble, but no. I will admit I am a little weary to put her back into 4 to test because I have to do some traveling soon. I figure I will change my Tcase oil then test everything.

 

If you use your 4wd often like you say your actuators are fine. What you described sounds like stuck limit switches.

Remove the two limit switches off the rear actuator. Clean them out really well with electrical contact cleaner. Reinstall and your stuff will likely work fine.