My son borrowed my GV to extract a couple of locals from the recent snow was giving it a powerwash yesterday and noticed it has no FWD its not engaging and not showing on dash light, ,jacked it up and had a good look around and nothing seems broken or out of place does anyone know if it has the air assist thingy like the Jimny vacume system?, cant think what else it could be! the lever feels normal and feels as if it is engaged ?Thinking hats on lads i know one of you will have the answer,ATB Roger,

oh yea its a 02 SWB if it makes any difference,

My only experience is when i strippes a GV diff down to fit Vitara internals, there is an air acuated ring which engages when you select 4wd, this enters the diff vis a tube, similar to breather tube, i also believe there is a small compressor in the engine bay somewhere so check thats running and powering up. I did have a big box of bits (left overs) but cant remember if ive chucked them), you are welcome to them if i can find them.

Dave had some pics of this mechanism im sure on one of his threads when building stumpy.


Richie

hi mate had same problem wtha gv v6 i had turned out there was a load of codensation in the auto hubs which when the temp dropped below freezind had turned to ice and wouldnt let the hubs engage , gutted at the time you neede it most . 4wd light would only flicker now and again as it tried to engage . next day temp rose bloody thing went straight in was then advised to drive round in 4h for a couple of mile to mush the condensation into the grease . worked ace but soon as i could i had them stripped regreased and didnt have that prob ever again . hope this helps .

Hi Landroger, further to your PM... here's the air actuator pump behind the front bumper -

That blows air down into the diff -

And that blows up a kind of "balloon" inside the diff that slides the driveshafts into "drive"

So the free wheeling is done inside the actual diff mechanism, and not by the hubs...

My original idea with Stumpy was to fit a switch in the wire that controls the air actuator pump, so that I could have 2WD Low... i.e. transfer box in low, and flick the switch off, so the pump went off, and you'd end up with 2WD Low...

But after stripping the diff (to put it in a steel axle) we (was removing the steel diff from a mate's diesel Vit before he sold it! ) decided it wasn't upto the job of "proper" offroading, so we rebuilt the diff without the air actuator gubbins...

This might help too -

Gives you an idea where all the wires are now anyways

Last one! Just for information more than anything else... this is from the FSM on how they check the air actuator... just so you get an idea how it works... that bit inflates and locks the diff together somehow... a lot of misconception that these were lockers, but al it does is connect the shafts to the diff to provide front wheel drive...

From what we researched at the time, it's all connected to the ECU, and it will only engage drive if you select four wheel drive and are travelling under 40mph... similarly, from what we read, the ECU will shut down the front diff's actuator if you go over 40mph... or so it would seem........

HTH

Dave