here again with the farther inlaws l322 v8, I had changed the alternator the other week with no issues car has been running fine until today when the battery light had come back on, he had taken it too have a tyre fitted and the dick in the tyre centre messed about with the high low gear knob tried too move the car and the solenoid had stuck and now its sinbetween gears and going no were, also battery drained and showing no charge coming from the alternator any ideas can the solenoid drain the battery the aa has no diagnostics for the car and he set about hitting the solenoid of which I thought was inside the gear box help please

Are you refering to the transfer box ratio change motor?

This is an electric stepper motor mounted on the outside of the transfer box.

It may be stuck in-between ratios....

They can be removed and you can then manually turn the selector shaft to select the desired ratio...then align the motor and replace (as far as I know)

You can manually turn the shaft but from memory it will only move in one direction (not the band) as it is a fast helix screw which is turned by the motor but if you remove the motor and turn it by hand CCW it will just unwind from the box. I think if you turn it CW it will pull the ring gear up towards you and engage either low or high, not sure which.

You can see in my phots what it does but it basically just moves a slider up and down which moves the ring gear up and down to engage high or low ratio.

There is a warning in rave about removing the shaft,I guess this is if you remove it and the ring moves too far down inside the box you wont be able to re engage the thread to raise it again and you will have to remove the box and split it I THINK ...

There used to be a video on youtube that Bemble / RRphil posted of a cutaway transfer box in operation but i think he has removed it.















You could try the neutral procedure to see if that helps

cheers lads that's the one im going over there now too have a proper look at it

I was going to add that you can probably unscrew the lead screw to the left slightly and tap it in and then screw it all the way to the right and do that a few times but just make sure the lead screw stays connected all the time on the inward stroke or it's box out time I reckon