It this anyone here?

[ShadowsPapa]

Just my tongue in cheek comment. Is FAD better than locking hubs?

Ah, silly me - I should have known - coming from your direction.
I hate locking hubs. They can freeze up, you have to get out and manually turn them in the worst possible places or conditions, and the automatic ones - had those, too - they break and then you are really screwed. I pulled off a set of automatic hubs and put on a set of heavy-duty Warn manual hubs but still - what a pain.
I don't know what a current FAD would be like - I really only paid attention to those used in the 1980s with the vacuum motors and shift forks to lock and unlock the axles. Not a strong system and you needed to be stopped. But I've not had one break, either.

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[Empty Pockets]

I personally loved the old Warne hubs. If I expected I would need 4x4 I just left them engaged. If I was just running around on hard roads, I didn’t. Many people back then thought you could/should only engage the hubs when in 4x4, but that just wasn’t the case at all.

 

[Empty Pockets]

Additionally, one older guy I used to hunt with thought engaging his hubs was putting the Jeep in 4 wheel drive. He was always getting stuck. When I showed him how to engage the transfer case he was amazed. His Jeep dealer told him to do it that way. Hopefully it was just a misunderstanding! He had a beautiful 1960 Jeep pickup (forerunner of the original Wagoneer based Gladiator).

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I personally loved the old Warne hubs. If I expected I would need 4x4 I just left them engaged. If I was just running around on hard roads, I didn’t. Many people back then thought you could/should only engage the hubs when in 4x4, but that just wasn’t the case at all.

Very true - it only meant you were spinning the axles inside the housing, didn't mean there was any load on anything. Just extra baggage. Living where I do, I'd do the same. If it was a nasty day and the roads weren't cleared well or at all, I'd lock the hubs before leaving my drive - may or may not engage transfer case, depending. If the roads cleared and I didn't expect any need, I wouldn't lock the hubs, or I'd unlock them. But they could be a beaner to unlock if you ran in 4x4 on dry roads and wound things up. Bad, very bad.

 

[Mark Doiron]

Front Axle Disconnect. I was reading up on what this is since the gladiator is my first Jeep. Essentially allows the front axle to not spin when in 2H to save MPGs. They have to cut a hole in the axle tube which they say can weaken the tube. This led to me reading way too much about FAB Deletes.

That was exactly my initial impression. They may have been doing the mod when this failure occurred. Personally, I know FAD has bad press from the YJ days, but this one is a different design (electrical vice pneumatic). I plan to leave it alone unless we have solid evidence that it is a serious problem to my use of the vehicle for overlanding.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

That was exactly my initial impression. They may have been doing the mod when this failure occurred. Personally, I know FAD has bad press from the YJ days, but this one is a different design (electrical vice pneumatic). I plan to leave it alone unless we have solid evidence that it is a serious problem to my use of the vehicle for overlanding.

For lurkers or those not familiar with the disconnect -
Actually the axles still spin - the idea is you don't spin the carrier, thus don't spin the ring gear, pinion and front drive shaft.
You split the right axle into two inside the right axle housing.
The left axle still spins in entirety, spinning the gear inside the carrier and the inner half of the right axle spins counter to the outer half, which is still connected to the right front wheel. You spin the carrier gears, the spiders, not the whole carrier. Only hub disconnects or locking hubs would allow the axles to not spin at all.

The mechanism to split the axle may vary but that's not where the strength or weakness is. It's the axle housing no matter what the "motor" is unless the whole disconnect is somehow self-contained inside the axle tube.
The idea is the same vacuum or electric - you have to have a device that moves a collar or sleeve to disconnect the two right axle "halves" or parts. That's similar to how the shifting happens in a manual transmission. Sliding a splined collar either locks the two pieces together, or sliding it off one part, unlocks them. So you have to get inside that axle tube to do the work of connecting and disconnecting that right axle.
The electric is more modern, less complex, but the axles will still work the same and be as strong or as weak.
I've not dug into the JT system or anything in the last few years but in other days, the axle housing or tube still had to be weakened either by it being two parts with a "box" between where the shifting took place, or some way to get in there and move a collar or sleeve - in any case you no longer have a single tube without any interruption.
(193,000 miles on my original vacuum shift motors both on the transfer case and on the front axle........ I do have NOS spares and a couple good used ones I bought years ago just in case, but so far, have not needed them. I've never lost a "shift motor" - lucky, I guess!)

 

[Jellygladiator]

Talk about flex wow

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