Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

Hi Christo,
The rear diff can only be actuated when you are in 4x4 mode. The diff lock works with a dog clutch, but the dogs have few teeth, so one needs to generate some relative motion between the two dog halves in order for them to line up and the lock to engage. To achieve this, you would have to drive in a curve. This should obviously only be done on a loose surface. When driving in a straight line, the rear diff lock will never engage, unless the dogs were lined up by coincidence from the beginning.

Of course it is possible that there is a malfunction in your systerm (typically a vacuum leak, faulty vacuum solenoid or electrical wiring issue), but the above describes a fully functional system's behaviour.

Soos ek verstaan maak die soliniod oop om die vac te laat werk so ja iets is nie lekker daar nie

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll give it one more go and see what happens. Can you guys just confirm that the ABS light should be flickering too?

Yip. When the diff is locked, the ABS system is de-activated automatically (useful feature, that), so the light flashes to alert the driver to this fact. When the diff lock engages, the diff lock light stops flashing, but the ABS light keeps flashing.

Thanks for the info Gerrit! Just back from my testrun. The light keeps on flashing, so there's definitely something wrong. I'll take it back to the dealer to sort it out this week. Thanks for all the feedback!

When I had that problem - I removed switch on the diff and found that the pin on the switch was stuck because of dirt.

I cleaned it and the pin could move out when the diff lock engaged and the light stayd on.

Ek het nou baie stories gelees oor die diff-lock wat nie werk nie. Ek het nou onlangs my '96 GQ gekry en uitgevind die diff-lock werk nie.

Dit lyk nou of ek bietjie moet gaan werk die naweek om uit te vind waar die probleem is voordat ek Bass Lake toe gaan oor 2 naweke.
Ek sal laat weet as ek die probleem kry en hoe dit reggemaak is.

Ek het nou alles getoets van voor tot agter.
First the power at the solenoid. This is a 4-pin contact. 12v on one side when diff-lock switch is off and 12v on the other side when diff-lock switch is on.
Next I checked the vacuum on the pipes at the diff. This also appears to be fine. When I removed the switch at the diff, the light on the dash came on.
Now everything seems to work, except the diff-lock/actuator.

What now? Any ideas? or do I take it to gearmax or Rex Diff?

Hi Deon,

Can you see any obvious damange to the actuator, like dents on it? One last check that you could do before taking it to Rex is; jack the back wheels up and secure with blocks as well as stoppers on the front wheels. Put car in neutral and turn one back wheel by hand, the two back wheels should turn in opposite directions. With car idling turn on the difflock switch and turn one wheel buy hand slowly, if actuator is working the "bull lock" will line up and engage and the two wheels will turn in same direction. When I changed my actuator at Rex I had to wait 4 weeks as the actuator was imported from Japan. Good luck in fixing the propblem.

Cheers
Rudolph

It could be that the actuator diaphragm is leaking. Unplug both hoses at the diff, place a clean hose on one side and suck on it for as long as you can. If you continue getting air, the diaphragm is probably shot.

As Rudolph said, good luck.