Mazda B3000 Question
 

I know that this question really belongs in the "Not Exactly SVX" forum, but no one ever looks down there, and I need an answer soon. My roommate has a Mazda B300 pickup, with shift on the fly 4 wheel drive. He noticed that he had a weird thing sticking out of his wheel. The first pic is of a good wheel on the opposite side of the truck. The second, third and fourth pics are what fell out of the wheel. And the fifth and sixth pics are of the wheel with the thing missing. First of all, what is the black thing? Second of all, why did it fall out of his wheel for no reason? Third, what will happen if we just stick it back into its port? And fourth, will is be ok to drive until its fixed? My geuss is that it has something to do with the 4wheel drive system. Since some systems make you manually lock the hubcaps, and his is a shift on the fly, I assume it has something to do with the self locking hubs.

Since no one else has replied...

Time for new hub locks... A pair of Manual Warn lockers would probably perform better, be more reliable, and cheaper than fixing one autolocker.

If you need to have a shop do it, I think you can just take it out of 4wd to drive it to em... don't just leave it as is and drive around though, you don't want junk in there. I've never really messed with one, but I guess you could try to take the wheel off, pop it back in the hub, and twist it... any ford guys on here know???? My gut feeling is that something failing forced it out or it'll just happen again due to wear... so I'd likely just convert or eat the price of a new one.