torque bind trouble shooting help

[Turtle]

I got a 92 SS with a 4eat auto trans. Lately I started getting the dreaded torque bind. I did a bunch of research on here last night and started going at it today... I went to go put a fuse in the fwd switch and noticed there was already a 15 amp fuse in there. so i take it out and go for a test drive and the torque bind is gone. So what does this mean exactly? With the fuse out am I running only FWD? And what was the cause of my torque bind?

[Turtle]

Any advice would help!!!

[Alphius]

With a fuse in, the Duty C solenoid is activated all the time at 100% duty cycle. That makes the car FWD, however the long term effects of leaving the fuse in are not well known or predicted. Some people leave the fuse in a long time with no problems, others start to have issues with their Duty C solenoid after a few weeks or months.

To me, it sounds like having the solenoid operated at 100% duty cycle successfully put you in FWD mode until recently, and the solenoid is now starting to wear out from being 100% activated all the time, so sometimes drops to 0% and you get a fully locked, torque binding AWD.

So, when you take the fuse out, the solenoid is allowed to work normally and you don't have the problem since the solenoid isn't seeing near the same amount of stress by running at 100% all the time. Hopefully you caught it in time to not do permanent damage to the trans, but if I were you I'd change the ATF and leave the fuse out for AWD and hope the torque bind doesn't return.

Do you get 16 flashes of the "Power" light when the car starts? That signifies that the TCU is detecting a problem, and you can read up on here on how to pull the codes from the TCU.

[Turtle]

Ya I had the flashing code, but when I took out the fuse, the flashing code went away. I'll see if it comes back on.

[Legacy777]

With the fuse installed, did the FWD light on the dash come on?

You should be able to still check the TCU for codes to see if anything was stored. Instructions are on my site.

[Turtle]

I pulled the fuse and when I went to turn on the car, I was trying to count the number of flashes... but that thing cough me off guard with how fast it flashes. So I got the count messed up... Anyway I go to drive it, with the fuse out, and the bind went away. And so did the flashing tcu code. I tried your method to recall the previous trouble code. But I now can't get it to flash again. I tried a few times.... also you think I'm really in AWD or is the trans just thinking its in AWD?

[Legacy777]

When the fuse was in, was there a FWD light illuminated on the dash? I'm not sure if they got rid of this light for the 92-94 Legacies. You can see a picture of it in this scan.

http://www.main.experiencetherave.com/s ... ns/031.jpg

The flashing at startup is a default 16 flashes and doesn't mean anything. You have to get into the diagnostics for it to flash a specific code.

If you don't have any problems now with the fuse out, I probably wouldn't sweat it too much. The trans wouldn't really be able to "think" it's in AWD and not be in AWD. Find some gravel or a wet road and try accelerating quickly from a stop. If your AWD is working, you shouldn't really have any wheel spin. If it's not working, the front wheels will spin.

[Turtle]

The FWD light was lit up when the fuse was in there. Not every time but it was on a lot. And now not at all.... I think that was actually 16 flashes. I'm 20 min away from the mountains so I'll go check out on some dirt roads.