You mean the guy that spent too much time and money trying to add locking hubs to a vehicle that wasn't designed for them and then apparently very quickly ended up blowing them up on the trail (like a few of us said he would) and we never heard from him again? Frankly if he had just gone the route you're taking he would have been better off and the money he would have saved with this setup rather than those custom and fragile hubs of his he would have come out ahead financially since he would not have ever saved enough gas with that setup to compensate for the cost of doing all that to his truck.
At least with this mod you're not spending thousands on custom crap that you won't be able to find at an Autozone or NAPA if it decides to go out on you. I didn't see you mention it though but you do know you'll have to drive around with the center diff locked in order to be able to go anywhere while the front axle is unlocked with this mod, right? If the center diff is unlocked (4HI unlocked) you'll just sit and spin the front drive shaft while the rear drive shaft won't move an inch. In 4HI locked the center diff that is in the transfer case is locked so that both the front and rear driveshaft will spin together, regardless of what is going on in the front or rear diffs.
The Colorado guys don't have that problem because their transfer case is designed differently and there is no center differential in it, so when the transfer case is in 2wd mode only the rear driveshaft is being driven, and when you put it in 4wd it engages the front driveshaft as well. The center differential in our transfer case is necessary for full time 4WD to work on pavement as the front and rear driveshafts have to be able to turn at different rates when taking turns and other similar maneuvers. However this means that if any part of the front drivetrain is no longer operational (broken or disconnected front driveshaft, differential, or axles) then you simply stop moving when in 4HI unlocked. Same thing happens if you were driving on a loose surface and 3 of your tires have grip but the 4th tire loses grip. You won't go anywhere until the traction control kicks in and tries to stop the spinning wheel from moving using the brakes. In 4HI locked you can have one tire lose traction and still move forward. once 2 tires lose traction (1 on each axle) you stop moving again unless you have locking front and/or rear differentials.
It's not a big deal to leave the center diff locked, but I think you're adding complexity and additional points of failure that don't need to be there for a benefit that is highly dubious at best and historically proven to be absent. You're not changing how much mass has to be moved/rotated by the engine with this setup so you won't see any improvement in MPG or power. You would have to replace the transfer case with one that is designed for part-time 4wd (or pay who knows how much money for that custom bit the locking hubs guy used) in order to see any potential (though still minuscule) benefits. Your H3 and feel free to mod away, but the whole 2wd vs full time 4wd thing has been hashed over several times on here. It's also been a topic of discussion for years around the internet and I have as of yet to see anyone with proof that a part time 4wd vehicle gets better gas mileage than a full time 4wd vehicle.
You make an excellent point and gave me something to think about with the T-case in high lock. I think someone said here the T-case is a 40/60 split in power. It never really clicked with me until you said to go any where in this 2WD mode, the T-case has to be in high.
I was hoping you would have forgotten about the guy with the hubs and blowing them out on his first trip lol. I remembered that and was hoping with unlocking the front axle, I wouldn't have to worry about that.
Now question, something I was thinking about with the guys that go with SAS, don't they have to drive in 4x4 high as well when then unlock their hubs? None of them had said anything about MPG better, that should have been my first indication that is a hard NO-GO. I really don't want to mess around with my T-case to make this work. This is more of a "what if" I try this kinda thing. I love how the T drives and knowing she'll take care of me, no matter where I'm at. Last thing I want to do is introduce variables of failure points.
I've done a lot of homework on this subject and I can see that it wasn't enough.
With my MPG, I could do a lot worse but I'm hovering at 13 on the street and 17 on the highway. Not great, but who buys these thing for MPG. Now that it's winter and I love to hop in a warm truck, my last tank gave me 200 miles with a fill up of 26 gallons. Don't do that math... the numbers are horrible.
One thing that has always been a mystery to me, this axle locking actuator lock the axles, duh. But how? It's just on the drive side, wouldn't that only unlock one wheel seeing how the other one is still locked in the diff? So rather than making this 2WD, now I'm in 3WD.
Like you said, the 355 guys have a 4x4 T-case sending 100% of the power to the rear axle when in 2WD. I've seen tons of videos about the axle actuator locking both wheels, but still having a hard time trying to understand the passenger side wheel.
The CV axle is in the diff, so how would the passenger side get unlocked?
