I bought my son a 01 4x4 Ranger with a 4.0l in it. One day he drove it home in 4low without realizing it and i assume drove it as fast as he could get it to go. I wasnt in the truck at the time so i have no idea what all went on with it. Heres a list of whats going on with it now. Wont shift out of 4low Reverse is mostly non-working but it sometimes will engage a bit but not fully. I read some place that if you lose reverse in this particular transmission you will also lose 1st gear. (auto trans) It said that reverse and 1st use the same band. Well 1st gear still works. With it being stuck in 4lo it was fairly easy to tell the difference between driving in D, 2, or 1. Is there an easy way to check if the transfer case shift motor still functions? Or does anyone know of a way to check the 4 wheel drive shifting switch on the dash? Could this be the 4x4 control module and is there a way to test it? I have hooked an OBDII scanner up but it doesnt tell me much other than the fuel level sensor code popping up. I welcome any advice on my problem and really hope some of you can help me with my problem before i have to start guessing. Thanks in advance, Mike. P.S. The 4x4low light is on
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If anyone is interested here is what i did. I removed the transfer case shift motor in 1 piece by removing the 4 mounting bolts I located the two wires which deliver power to the motor itself. they are orange and yellow. I hooked up 2 wires to a spare battery, then hooked them into the orange and yellow wires plug locations and made sure the shift motor would rotate back and forth all the way I reinstalled the shift motor back on the transfer case I used the spare battery to shift the truck back into 2 wheel drive then i test drove it. All was well I then plugged the shift motor back into its factory wiring plugin. Then i cranked the truck up and tested its ability to shift into all 3 positions from the dash switch and encountered no problems. I can hear the 4x4 module in the dash clicking and also the transfer case shifting into and out of gear. So far its just fine. I found a site which had alot of replies from people with problems like this. A few of them found out their shift motor had rotated to far in one direction for the computer to read the gear location and they stopped working at this point. Their replies said they did exactly what i did and some of them had no further problems after that. Is my sons truck fixed? Well it works now and all it cost me was a little bit of sweat in the hot GA sun. If it continues to have this problem i will buy a new shift motor as ive seen them on Amazon for around $70+/- but untill then he can drive it. I was thinking that if i wanted i could just hook a two way switch up to the orange and yellow wires and shift the truck that way. By leaving the other wires plugged in as they came from the factory i could then read the dash light to know what position it was in. Cant see any reason that would not work but i believe it would eventually burn the motor up trying to get it to stop on 4hi. 4lo and 2 wheel drive would be easy since they are on the two opposite extremes of the shift motor. Heres the link where i found the shift motor help http://www.explorerforum.com/Singleton/web/pages/tcase.html
