4wd won't shut of unless you cycle the ignition?

So, I picked up my taco a while back. The only problem the PO said it had was when in 4wd to get it back to 2wd you have to turn the truck off, then back on, then you move a little bit and it comes out of 4wd.

He even showed it to me.

So, I want to fix this. Here's what happens.

In 2wd, push the 4wd button and it goes into 4wd and dash light comes on and 4wd works fine.

Now, you push the button again to go back to 2wd. You can see a slight flicker in the dash light but it stays in 4wd. I drove for a couple miles like that and it still stayed in 4wd.

Stop, turn truck off, turn back on, drive a couple inches and it goes into 2wd and the 4wd light goes off.

He said he had it looked at and the mech said it's just from sitting for so long without using 4wd and with use should "work itself out".

Anything I can do to fix this? I did change the xfer case oil. But it's been too cold to look around to find out what could be the problem.

The cycling of the ignition is what's odd. Makes me think it's not mechanical.

The right blinker also goes out when you put the brakes on but that's another story... everything works great!

 

replace the 4wd sensor

 

I did some searching and found some 4Runners that seem to have similar issues. Some talk about a wire on the drivers side of the xfer case, some on the passenger side, some even talk about the front diff sensor. All referring to them as the "4wd sensor".

So, any more specifics anyone can provide? Parts numbers? After reading the threads there are a lot of similarities with mine but not exactly.