How to Replace 4WD Actuator 2002-08 Dodge RAM 1500

Okay friends, to get started on our four-wheel drive actuator, you're going to need to locate it on the passenger side of your front differential tube. You're going to find some wiring, looks a lot like this, grab onto this little tab with your thumb, give it a nice squeeze, and then come in between the harness itself and the actuator, and just take this off. Take a peek, make sure you don't see any funny colors, and set this aside. Now we're going to have to dismount the four mounting bolts.

Something to think about is you're going to have a little bit of gear oil that comes out of this. So make sure you have a nice collection bucket to collect it all, and let's get this last bolt out of here. Carefully draw this off of here. There it is friends. Let's go ahead make sure there's no gasket on there. Now we need to go ahead and clean up the area where the new seal is gonna ride. Use a razor blade and be careful.

Now to use a little bit of this 75W-90 gear oil and we're just gonna coat this seal. Now it looks great, and for some good measure, I'm just gonna go right along this area right here and right there. Now we're gonna clean up our bolt threads that hold that on. Now let's go ahead and get our four wheel drive actuator up on here. You want to make sure that you have this area lined up with this in there, that's the collar that actuates your four wheel drive. Stir in all your bolts and then we're gonna snug them up and torque them to 20 foot-pounds.

Reconnect your connector. Put that on there, give it a nice tug. There we go, nice and secure. Perfect. Now it's gonna be time to make sure we check our differential fluid here. Let's go ahead and pull this off, take a nice gloved finger, put it in and curl it down a teeny bit, make sure you've got fluid. This looks great. If for some reason your fluid's low, top it off with 75W-90 gear oil. And of course we're going to clean up our mess.