When I turn the wheel while driving, the car almost grinds to a halt, like its in 4 wd low. It has Select Trac AWD. This literally just happened.

The car has 44,000 miles and have never had a problem. No leaks or anything.

Straight line or subtle turns are no problem, transmission shifts fine.

But when I make a hard right or left the car will stop unless I really hit the accelerator. And even then it makes a grinding or pulling noise. I've also noticed a slight whine and the engine is idling a little rougher.

It really feels like it is locked in 4wd low, which it obviously doesn't have.
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I had the same problem last Friday that when I turned hard left/right into a parking stall at a slow speed it seemed like you were pushing against a solid wall. The same was true for backing out either right or left from the parking stall. The garage tells me two items. First, in the U-joint ahead of the transfer caseone joint clamp was missing one bolt completely. The second item they state is the control module with an actuator that sits on the side of the transfer case and switches the vehicle in and out of 4WD. After the bolt wasreplaced the vehicle seemed nearly fine when driving around the parking lot at the garage. I'm not 100% convinced that the control module is actually bad. I had test driven the vehicle last evening after the bolt was replaced and prior to their diagnostics to determine if the module was bad and could not get the vehicle to act up again.
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