Transfer case grinding from 4lo to 4hi

[SantaStrong]

Yesterday, my wife and I took our brand new Grenadier for its first day out on the trails in north Georgia. Overall the trip was a huge success, we LOVE the Grenadier and it handled everything we threw at it very easily. We go into a few situations that called for 4Lo and both lockers to get through, and on two occasions I got some bad gear grinding from the transfer case when switching back from 4Lo (center diff unlocked) to 4Hi (center diff unlocked)

My procedure was:

-Stop, put transmission in neutral and put on handbrake

-Shift transfer case from low range to high (center diff unlocked)

- Put the transmission in drive, and would immediately get a loud gear grinding sound from the T-case

We DID NOT have the issue when switching from 4Lo to 4Hi with the center diff locked, so we did that for the rest of the day. Was this just operator error/not knowing how to properly use our new vehicle? Or is this some kind of issue I should speak with the dealer about? For reference, this isn't my first 4x4 and I have a decent amount of experience off-road but am by no means an expert.

 

[Tjeska]

We had it with our dealer test car & learned to do it this way, never had any grinding anymore:

- standstill & transmission in neutral
- select reverse & let car roll little bit to get the "tension" out of the drivetrain
- neutral
- shift transfer case to (low or high)

Most important thing here is to have a feel on the "load" on the whole drivetrain, if this is gone, than you can safely shift

 

[Tinerfeño]

Hi range has not been engaged properly. What did you do afterwards? Center lock has nothong to do with hi/lo.

My transfer shift was a little bit tight the first time I used it but since then it works fine.

 

[Tinerfeño]

Most important thing here is to have a feel on the "load" on the whole drivetrain, if this is gone, than you can safely shift

When center diff is open there can't be any tension on drivetrain when gearbox is in neutral.

 

[Tjeska]

If it works, its works, and we have now 10K km's on the clock, never had any grinding.
But we had it 3 times with the test car, since using this method we don't.