I’m moving forward with the Eaton E-Locker for my front diff.

Let me tell you that I’ve read a lot of post on here about these trucks. People are not kidding when they say the front bearing hubs are hard to remove. I thought maybe some of the posts were extreme cases. Either way I got them both off; however one of them was destroyed in the process. I tried PB-Blaster, heat, pushing them off with the power steering, a puller and beating on them every which way come Sunday, in different combinations. I think I’ll order two new ones and apply liberal amounts of anti-seize when they go back in.

My U-joints appear to be fine, however I bought new grease-able precisions last year that I’ll be installing.

The ball joints appear to be good as well. I’m on the fence with these. I’d like to put grease-able ones in while I have it apart, but why spend the money until they are bad?

We’ll see how much grinding it really takes to get one of these Eaton E-Lockers installed. I’ll post back with my progress.

 

I had thought about adding one but the 4wd system seems to work good for what I do esp the low setting,that kind of impressed me.

As far as the u joints & ball joints mine are still ok as far as I can tell but I do want to upgrade to greasealbe one's,but that I am going to take it somewere to have it done for the same reason you posted above.

Good luck on it and keep us posted on how it's going.

Pav

 

Now is the time to put in lock out hubs in! DO both at the same time save a ton of time...

When the front is locked that thing is a TANK! Saved me from being towed 2x already... Let alone get up my driveway when the TrackRite GT will not give power to the tire with traction... On ICE it's useless. The e-locker will get me past the ice to a spot that has enough friction (like snow) to make the GT work and shift power to the best wheel.

The combination of the e-locker and the TrackRite GT is good. W/O the locker I got stuck in 4x4 all the time on ice with 2 wheels on dry pavement while the other 2 (on the same side) were on ice. Really stunk!

 

I have been off line for a while . Can I get lockers for my 2004 2500 4x4

Winter is coming

 

I have the E-locker in the housing. The diameter of the electromagnet is 5.875” so you must grind the housing to clear it. The area that needs ground is on the ring gear side. It is 180 degrees worth of material to the inside of the bearing seat. Essentially you are making a sloped region of the case parallel to the ring gear

I made a 5.875” diameter template from a piece of plywood so I could verify my grinding profile. I drew a line across the template to align with the bearing cap face and drew a “sharpie” line of the inside of the case for reference. You don’t want to grind the profile much larger than 5.875”. If you measure the distance form the center of the bearing on the E-Locker to the outside face of the electromagnet you can get an idea of how far to grind on the case.

Anyway, it took a while to complete the grind since I spent some time masking off the pinion gear, bearing and other areas inside the case, plus I had to run to the store for some new grinding wheels. I’d say I removed .125-.150” at most and was no-where near ready to grind through the case.

Once I felt I was done I emptied a can of brake cleaner on the inside of the case to clean out all the grinder dust. I also hit it with WD-40 to suppress rust.

I installed the ring gear on the E-Locker and lifted the assembly up in to the case with no problems. (The thing is heavy, however.) It cleared the case with room to spare. I then figured out where to drill the hole for the wires and how much was going to be removed from the ring gear side bearing cap to clear the electromagnet anti-rotation tab. The bearing cap takes only a few minutes to prepare.

I still need to set the backlash and replace my U-joints. I have wheel bearings and ball joints on order so I won’t have it on the road for a few more days.

My conclusion is that the (19622) Eaton E-Locker is a viable option for the front diffs on our trucks, (or at least mine). The hardest part of the project (so far) was removing the hub bearings.

There is the ARB air locker that bolts right in, but I didn’t like the idea of relying on a constant source of air to keep the thing locked.