How Our Long-Term Ford Bronco Lost Its 4-Wheel Drive

• Our long-term Bronco's 4WD system stopped functioning.
• Three dealerships failed to find or fix the problem.
• The fourth service center finally found the issue and completed the repairs within two weeks.
• We're glad this costly repair was covered under warranty.

We didn't disregard the issue, but after what the dealership told us, and with normal unproblematic driving periods, we thought it might've been a one-time deal. Until it wasn’t.

Senior production manager Amy Silliman and associate producer Cindy Mendoza took our Bronco on a road trip to Montana. Upon arriving in Bozeman, they found snowy roads, but nothing that would've held the Bronco back. They pulled off to the side of the road for a quick photo, into about 2 inches of snow. The Bronco wouldn't drive out in regular two-wheel drive, so they attempted to put it in high-range four-wheel drive to get through the muck. No dice.

“I jumped in the driver’s seat to put the car in 4H, and as soon as one of the wheels started to spin, the car kicked itself out of 4H, went back to 2H and gave a warning that 4x4 mode was unavailable," Silliman said. A Ford dealer in Bozeman was not able to reproduce the issue, and instead, gave Amy and Cindy a pamphlet on how to use the G.O.A.T. off-road modes, assuming it was just user error — which it wasn't.

Getting proof

Once the Bronco was back in SoCal, John Adolph decided to take the Bronco off-roading with the intention of getting the four-wheel-drive warning and documenting it all. "I found a small hill/hump with a rock, roughly 12 inches high. Not extreme in any way, but it would create a tipping point where I could see if 2WD would suffice or not," Adolph said. It worked; this triggered the usual error message and inability to shift into 4WD.

Digging a little deeper about this error message, Ford states: "If the system is in 4A [four-wheel-drive auto] and AWD module detects excessive stress or high energy going through the clutch, the shift motor will release the clutch and message center indicates '4x4 temporarily disabled.' When the system has the ability to cool off, 4x4 operation will be automatically restored. The message center will temporarily display '4x4 restored.'"

Even though John wasn't in 4A when the error appeared, he decided to back off the rock and wait five minutes. After that? "4x4 restored."

John reattempted the same obstacle only to receive the error message again. But this time, waiting for the system to cool off didn’t fix the problem. He also confirmed that the front axles didn’t engage. He tried switching through all the transfer case modes and even restarted the Bronco, but nothing worked. He was stuck in 2WD and the SUV had to be recovered by park rangers.

Upon its return to the office, we decided to take the Bronco back to the dealer. We gave them a rundown of everything John had experienced. They agreed that all of it was abnormal but once again weren’t able to make any discoveries of mechanical problems. Our service adviser said they contacted an internal Ford hotline that advised their technician not to attempt any repairs if the problem could not be duplicated on a test drive. But we didn't want to give up.

Finally getting answers — and repairs

We decided to take our Bronco to a different dealer farther away from our headquarters: Ken Grody Ford. Not only were they happy to have us, but within hours, we received a call with details on exactly what the problem was and what the repairs would look like.

After performing a deep dive on our suspension, the team determined that the problem was stemming from the front axles and differential. They proceeded to remove the front axle shafts and found both to be broken at the splines that go into the differential housing. Because of the damage on the axles, the carrier differential was pulled apart to examine the inside and, indeed, more damage was found. This impairment is what kept our front drive unit from engaging and our Bronco from being able to use four-wheel drive. To remedy this, the dealer replaced both front axles and the carrier differential.

Thankfully, everything was covered under our warranty, but we asked what the costs would've looked like if we had to pay out of pocket. Both axles would've added up to $622.85, the carrier differential would've been $1,561.12, gear oil would've added $90.72, and labor would've set us back $2,995. The whole repair could have totaled more than $5,200 if it wasn't covered under warranty.

Edmunds says

We're glad to have the Bronco's four-wheel-drive system functioning again. The biggest headache from all of this was the first dealer's inability to diagnose the problem. Thanks to Ken Grody Ford for getting it right.