Back to the future - Manual Locking Hubs

New shiny manual locking hubs!  In a move to eliminate possible points of failure in 4WD selection, I have replaced the factory vacuum hubs.

I have had the vacuum hubs fail on occasion and even though the Jimny is brilliant on the sand, I would rather have 4WD being available when I need it - especially when crossing a Sand Desert with 1100 odd sand dunes.

Unfortunately, the vacuum solenoid can't be taken out of the system and needs to be tricked so the rest of the electronics don't report a fault.  This means that the vacuum hose are no longer a potential issue, we still have the electronic vacuum solenoid switch and the 4WD selector switch on the transfer case to contend with.

I am having a slight fault in the system where the car engine needs to be warm before the 4WD selector registers that the vehicle is in 4WD.  I am assuming that this fault is in the vacuum solenoid given I have replaced the selector on the transfer case so I will replace the vacuum solenoid as we count down to the trip which is only 3 weeks away now.

The only downside to manual hubs is now you have to get out of the car to lock the hubs in and I stop to engage both low and high range 4WD which is still a switch in this model Jimny (2007).