I was driving on the freeway yesterday and suddenly felt a vibration from the front end, thought I had a flat tire. No flat, so I limped it home and discovered that one hub was locked and one unlocked. What kind of damage could this cause? (94 Toyota 4X4)

 

Shouldnt cause any.... all it does is cause part of your front drivetrain to spin... the vibration might be from just part of it spinning and not all of it... You should be just fine.

 

Thanks for the response, I was afraid to take it back out until I got an answer. I'll go for a drive around the block and hopefully the vibration will be gone.

 

ya, I would just unlock it and take it for a spin... you should be fine! If not, post back and we can troubleshoot.

 

X2

Some of us do that deliberately on the trail when we need traction on one side but not the other.

 

Or also do it when you have a front locker and dont want to make a 5 point turn.

 

Exactly my point!

 

This would cause the unlocked axle to spin twice its normal speed, you should check the seals. I saw this happen once, and the seal on the unlocked axle did get compromised. It leaked and had to be changed.

 

???

The unlocked axle won't spin. It might move some from the friction in the differential being transfered over to it but its not driven by anything.

Those halfshalfts aren't meant to be driven past 40mph tho.

 

Really?! This is news to me. I drive with them engaged about half the time....mostly because I'm being lazy and want to get on with my destination. Partly also due to trying to compensate for those few seconds I might be late to work. (I know.....silly isn't it. ) Anyhow, you are suggesting then that it's not a good idea?

 

That is not true. Trucks with IFS from the factory without manual locking hubs have the half shafts turning whenever the vehicle is in motion.

 

But when only one hub is locked the half shaft will spin at twice the vehicle speed. In a standard open differential the speed of shaft A plus speed of shaft B must equal the speed of the driveshaft.

This happened to me (granted I have a truetrac up front too). I relied on a newbie wheeling friend to unlock the passenger side hub and it didn't happen. I drove a hundred miles with it locked, and it seeped out lots of diff fluid and I had to change the seal.

But I would say if it didn't seep at all, don't sweat it!

 

are you sure that it would spin at twice the speed of the other shaft? if the drive line did not turn, the half shaft with the unlocked hub would spin at the same speed as the other side but because of the spider gears it would be spinning backwards, if the drive shaft did spin because of drag it would just slow down the unlocked shaft

 

Correct.

If you lift your front end up with both hubs locked, and spin one wheel the other wheel will spin the opposite way, but at the SAME speed.

 

OT, i think i saw your runner today on 99E right before the tunnel at the trans place?