94 Ranger Hubs

My front automatic hubs don't always completely disengage after switching back to 2WD. I've tried driving in reverse 15 + feet. Will be driving and off and on hear a humming/whinning/grinding type of noise. I've pulled the outer caps off and they look clean, grease looks good. Olny happens in extreme cold. What lubricant should be in there?

Thx, Buck

I would think wheel bearing grease would be sufficient for hubs.

Try Bel Ray waterproof grease. It's all I use with no problems. You can get it at almost any motorcycle or atv shop.

Henry

Thanks friends!

Happy Holidays!

Don't use anything that is thick ! you'll make it worse.

Yeah, my mechanic told me to use tranny fluid.

Guys:

Just serviced a set of auto hubs that were screwing up on a 93 Explorer. Got some good advice on parts and lubricant from this cool website (link at bottom), but instructions were a bit bland. Anyway, here's what you will need....

1. Pair of long reach fine tip snap ring pliers.
2. Two SKF #6200 Bearings. (One per hub)
3. A parts washer or a couple of cans of brake cleen.
4. Automatic Transmission Fluid. (1 Litre or quart)
5. Mechanics / hook/pick or dentist set.
6. Two people.


1. Jack up the truck and safely support the vehicle and remove the wheel.
2. Remove the reataining clips holding the hub on (if they are still there)
3. Slide the hub off.
4. Place the hub upright in a bench vise and gently clamp it.
5. Use the snap ring pliers. At the very bottom you will see a small snap ring. Remove this. It's a bit tricky. I had to grind down the tips on my snap ring pliers a bit to make them fit.
6. Remove the hub from the vise and turn upside down. Bang it against your hand a few times and the core should pop out. The core consists of a large outer gear and a smaller gear shaft with a bearing in the one end. We will get to the bearing later. WE WILL CALL THIS SUB ASSEMBLY 1.
7. Put the hub casting back into the vise and clamp it again. NOW WE WILL REMOVE SUB ASSEMBLY 2.
8. Find a large socket.....big enough to press down on the plastic spring retainer but not too big so that you can access the circlip retaining the rest of the guts in there.
9. One person uses the socket (with ratchet and extension) to press down the plastic spring retainer. Press it sqaurely. You don't want to break this.
10. The other person must now dig out the large retaining circlip with the pick or dentist set. This is also a bit tricky.....but not as bad as the first snap ring.
11. Once the circlip is out, the outer hub gear (sits in a plastic spacer/retainer) and large spring come out.
12. Clean all parts spotless with varsol tank or brake cleaner.
13. The grease and gunk is what causes the hubs to stop working in the first place (or the small bearing goes).
14. Once all the parts are clean, (all spotless, including the hub casting) you can re-assemble the SUB ASSEMBLY 2 (Large spring and gear encased in plastic.) Press it down and have a buddy install the large circlip. You may have to turn the assembly a bit to get it to line up so you can push it down.
15. Take SUB ASSEMBLY #1 and remove the bearing retainer (snap ring). Pop the bearing out and replace with new SKF 6200 bearing. re-install the snap ring retainer.
16. Drop SUB ASSEMBLY #1 back down into the hub all the way and replace the small snap ring.
17. The hub should spin freely, and will most likely still have a bit of play in it. This is okay.
18. Fill the hub with ATF and spin the mechanism. It will actually take on quite a bit of oil after a while.
19. After 5 minutes or so, flip the hub upside down and drain off the excess ATF.
20. Put hub back on truck etc......
There you have it.....do not use any grease in these babies. It is a no-no. I use lots of grease in my manual hubs and that is okay, but the auto-hubs don't like it at all. ATF works great in them.

In our case, the one plastic retainer was broken and jammed in there sideways, this is why the one hub was completely inoperable....we made one out of a piece of brass. It took about 2 hours with a dremel tool! There are no seperate parts available from Ford. If you run into this, I would suggest hunting down a core from an auto-wrecker. Our local guy had a 91.....he wanted 150 bucks for the one good hub, the supposedly bad one was only 20 bucks. The bad hub was full of old stinky dried out grease....thats all!

There should be lots of so-called bad hubs around since not too many people know how to service them! Just be careful what you buy.

We had some dissasembly issues with one before we figured it out (which is why I wrote detailed instructions on how to do this job) We ended up runing one of the hub castings.....as i said, the instructions weren't the greatest on the site, but the advice was.
If you follow my instructions, you should be able to pull this off without any problems. Now that the hubs are done, they work like brand new! I'm beginning to think there really is no need to switch to manual lockers....there is nothing wrong with the auto hubs, provided they stay clean inside. A good cleaning every 3-4 years and re-ATF should do the trick.

Good Luck and here's the link, which also has awesome info on troubleshooting electric transfer cases and other things.

http://www.glue.umd.edu/~singletn/exp.html