Thread: Stuck centre diff lock selector

Hi all,
Had a blast over at Fraser last week but one problem did arise.
The centre diff lock selector seized in the lock position which posed a problem for our return trip home. I ended up disconnecting the c/d from the selector and manually disengaging it. It was weird as the high/low selector still worked fine and I had no knowledge of the workings it and my Haynes manual didnt cover it either.
Once home I pulled the selector out of the car and found that the shaft that moves the c/d lever was seized in the selector housing. Salt water and sand had rusted it up. I bathed it in a parts washer for a while and cleaned it all out, then applied antiseize to everything and reassembled. All workes good as gold now and is a lot smoother and lighter than it has ever been since owning the car. It really is a stupid design because the selector shaft runs through the housing and is exposed on both sides to the elements. It really should have some type of cover like an end cap or something. The other silly thing I found was that you had to drill out rivets in the floor so to remove a cover to get to the selector and then to find that top of the mechanisim sits in a bath of grease with no dust cover on it , so the grease is full of dirt and sand and crap. I made up a cover to help minimise the amount of crap that goes in there in the future. So if you find your c/d is getting harder to lock in it may be your selector starting to seize like mine did.

Gees... are defenders like this too? Doesn't sound too good.