I have a Mazda B3000 pickup, with shift on the fly 4 wheel drive. I noticed that I have a weird thing sticking out of my wheel. The first pic is of a good wheel on the opposite side of the truck. The second picture is what was protruding from the other side. First of all, what is the black thing? Second of all, why did it fall out of my wheel for no reason? Third, what will happen if I just stick it back into its port? And fourth, will it 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 mine is a shift on the fly, I assume it has something to do with the self locking hubs.

 

Most "Shift on the fly" systems are only shift on the fly after you have locked the hubs. You can keep the hubs locked and go into 2wd and drive it like that but it may potentially cause damage depending on how long and what your driving on at what speed. I would have to reread my info on 4wd systems, havn't really thought about them in about a year or more.