Should my front axle spin when it's not locked?

I did a quick search and didn't find anything, but just did the front brakes on my 96 with Aisin manual hubs. I was spinning the passenger to see if my new rotors rubbed the dust shield and saw that the front axle wasn't spinning when I turned the rotor. I went to the driver side and spun rotor and noticed that the axle spun with the rotor. Is this normal? I noticed that the driver side was harder to lock an unlock the hub..

 

If one was locked and the other was not then yes. Otherwise no. If one is sticking you should check it out. It may need cleaned and/or lubed. Hopefully nothing worse than that.

 

^^^correct^^^

I had the same issue a few years ago on my "pickup" turned out the springs in the hub got all fubared up somehow and it wasnt fully unlocking the hub. Causing the one axle to spin like youre experiencing. It required taking that "face" we'll call it off and resituating the springs. I believe there were two springs in there that became fuggered up with eachother. I remember it being kinda confusing to figure out how it was supposed to be but after a couple tries i got it. Now this was a pickup not a tacoma so it could be a whole different design in our taco hubs, ive never been inside my tacoma's hubs so idk. But hopefully itll be a nice and easy fix fur ya! Pop that face off your hub real quick and do a quick inspection, itll only take a couple few minutes to do your initial inspection. ..

 

Exactly what he said, I noticed a small increase in MPG after fixing mine since it had been robbing the engine power a little extra.