Self-Unlocking Hub

I have a full floater D44 with Warn lockouts. The drivers side hub is unlocking itself when I drive, on road or off. It started doing it a few months ago. I took the hub apart, serviced the wheel bearings, cleaned everything real well. I couldn't see anything wrong with the hub or anything else. The dial clicks in pretty well in Free position, but doesn't really click in when it gets to Lock. Just wondering if anyone else has had a problem like this.

 

Doesn't Warn still offer ones with set screws to lock them in place?

 

Your best bet will probably be to replace it, but I had a buddy one time that had this problem because he had too much grease in the hub. How much is in yours?

 

I emailed Warn Tech Service and they sent me a contact # I'm going to call today. I'll post the results as soon as I talk to them.

 

I had this exact problem with the Warn hubs used in my full floater project (tech section). There are two problems happening here:
1 - The spring loaded gear in the hub can work itself out of gear under constant loading. I found that it would pop out of gear, the power lock would lock the axle, and it would pop back into gear. Really fun to have happen at 60 mph. Bang! Nick Miller suggested putting in a spacer (which I made from 3/4" hardware strapping) inside the outer compression spring so the gear could not work itself out of gear. That fixed the problem, at the expense of no longer having the hubs so easy to lock/unlock.
2 - The second problem is that right wheel's rotational acceleration is in the direction of unlocking the hub. To wit, washboarded roads in particular. This I fixed by placing a little bar across the hub, held down by two of the six permiter screws, that fixed the hub lock/unlock knob.
Looks kind of hokey but it works.