Electrical glitch / lockers engaged

[Maximus Gladius]

So, finished my annual diff fluid change and punkin clean out, cleaned off locker sensor magnet, put er all back, filled up. Confirmed lockers by putting it in 4x4, off road + and tried the locker engagement and disengagement… that works fast, …engaging is quick, on the second flash of the locker symbol but now when it comes to disengaging, the light keeps on flashing, both on the dash and on the switch BUT lockers HAVE disengaged, but the light says otherwise.

Even on the OFF ROAD pages, Drivetrain shows lockers are locked even though I’ve now switched out of 4H to 2H, but they are not.

Once I shut down the engine and start up, flashing stops but the diagram on the off road pages still shows the lockers engaged even though I am in 2 H.

I potted my sensors back in 2021 and the lockers have always performed as expected every winter. Any advice that could shed light on this?

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[Maximus Gladius]

Going back in on the diffs tonight. Checking the connectors this time and spray clean those. Will let y’all know if that was the issue. If that doesn’t fix it,…it’s bypass time.

 

[Maximus Gladius]

I was only able to get at the front one tonight. I took off the sensor and undid the connector. I saw that there was oil in the connector so that and the seal got spray cleaned with electrical cleaner, dried them out then sprayed them with DeoxIT D5 and clipped them together. Put it all back and filled it up…again.

After turning on the engine and pulling up off road pages to the drivetrain, the locked indicator for both lockers cleared themselves. I then went on a little test drive up the straight alley and lockers all functioned normally for 4H and 4L, they would also disengage but the dash and off road pages still showed they were engaged when they clearly weren’t.

After about a minute of flashing, the indicators finally said disengaged. I’ll get to the back locker tomorrow or Saturday and clean that connector too. Still leaning heavy on just bypassing them both.

 

[Maximus Gladius]

The weekend was busy chasing down the locker communication issue. I pulled off the back panel under the window, spotted water that had leaked from the window a while ago that had run down behind the panel and onto the sub woofer and Alpine module. The DTCM (drivetrain control module) is also next to the woofer so the plug-ins on both modules got pulled, cleaned and put back.

I did have a much better locker “dash disengage” from what took a minute to stop flashing, was now about 15 seconds before flashing stopped. Located the problem was with the front locker, the back disengaged at the second flash.

Today, the last thing left to pull apart and clean was the front actuator plug on the outside of the diff. This plug is difficult to get at and to also see the locking tab so I had to use my bore scope camera to see on the blind slide and use a large pick tool to unlock the connector to pull it apart.

Well, what a mess the plug was. Used electrical spray clean to flush the mud crap out, followed with DeoxIT D5, followed by DeoxIT SN5 Shield and clipped it back together. This was the culprit but I think it was a culmination of leaking connector seals that got oil in them and cleaned both front and back, cleaning of the DTCM 3 connectors and the front actuator connector cleaning.

Now dash recognizes locker engage and disengage on the second flash. I’m happy its done.

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