Front hubs freezing up?

[DTHotrod]

In the past couple of days, the weather has been freezing cold. Lower than normal Oklahoma temps. I have a 74 Bronco and have been having problems with the front hubs not engaging, I guess... I can lock the front hubs, put the transfer case in 4 HI and it is still only in 2 wheel. A friend of mine suggested that some moisture and the cold might have frozen the hubs and is not letting them do their job. I have never heard of this myself. If this is the case how do you unfreeze them and also keep this from happening in the future. If this is not the case, all take any suggestions of what to check on.

 

[Seabronc]

Take them apart, clean them, lightly grease and reassemble them. There may be too much grease in the hubs and what is there is getting too solid in extreme cold. Also they may be full of crap like your friend said.

 

[S_bolt19]

do what Seabronc said, but sometimes the 4-hi doesn't fully engage. roll forward while trying to engage it so that you can feel it mesh in the x-fer case. Mine does that almost every time i try to go into 4-hi. I don't have a problem in 4-lo, but hi is a prob. Probably means I gotta rebuild that thing soon.