Manual Locking Hubs

[Greasemonkey]

Hi how can you have locking hubs on a car that has no auto lockers - the VX has a drive shaft that turns all the time the 4wd is on all the time it would mean fitting rodeo/trooper front drive shafts and taking a manual hub from the same vehicle - i don't see the point - did you know with a small modification you can convert the TOD to 2wd anyway - mine has 2wd already as its a JDM VX - its great fun and makes the car a lot more economical and faster but you do lose handling at speed i am sure you could convert yours using some info about the JDM TOD system - its the same as the trooper which in the US should come with 2wd as well
cheers
Steve

[kodiak]

It allows me to do parking lot acrobatics and it saves a little gas on long trips. The TOD doesn’t seem to care. I’ve had them on for about 8 months, I pulled mine off an old rodeo.

[nfpgasmask]

Pardon my ignorance, but can someone explain exactly what the advantage to having locking hubs would be? I mean, we are AWD to begin with, and then we have 4L, so what would having locking hubs add in addition to what we already have going for us?

Now, I know a 4WD/2WD toggle switch would help with gas mileage and possibly with wear on our front end components, but is that all we are talking about here?

Bart

[kodiak]

Nope, that’s about it other then its fun to have 2wd sometimes and you get a little more street cred with the off road crowd.

[kodiak]

And if you don’t have hubs you still get wear on the front components.

[JHarris1385]

I am in the same ball park as Bart..... I would like a little more insight on this. So if I installed manual hubs my front IFS would not be powered? Grease what is needed in order to make only the rear driven?

[tom4bren]

Check my logic on this please someone:

1) You are still sending power down through the half shafts but it doesn't reach the ground since your wheels are now free spinning.

2) The gear train for the front drive is designed to operate under load and it MAY not like freewheeling.

3) Since the gear train is still active, you may save some gas but not much.

4) Since the gear train is still active, you may gain some power but not much.

5) No increase in reliability since the drive train is still active (maybe less since 2) may decrease the longevity of the transfer case).

IMHO - not worth it, my front drive train stays functional.

[kodiak]

I am in the same ball park as Bart..... I would like a little more insight on this. So if I installed manual hubs my front IFS would not be powered? Grease what is needed in order to make only the rear driven?

Grease

All the manual hubs do is allow you to ether connect or disconnect the front wheels from the front axel allowing you to do what’s called free wheel the TOD will still sent power to the front axle when it thinks it needs it but it just wont make it to the wheels. Now when you are cruising down the freeway the TOD usually isn’t sending anything to the front wheel so if you have the front hubs in free wheel your not needlessly turning the from axle and wasting gas.