by doing this, Did I ruin my Viscous Coupler?

[Monkeyjoe]

I am just curious, what would it take to ruin the VC in my 82 SX-4?

When my rear axle shaft broke, I was in heavy traffic in Colorado Springs.  As soon as I realized I had a broken axle shaft, I though maybe I could get the car to move a little to get it off the road by putting it into 4WD.  I shifted to 4WD and slowly started to let out the clutch with little to no throttle,  as soon as I had the clutch all the way out and no movement of the car, I pushed the clutch back in and shifted back out of 4WD.  I left the car sit until the rollback truck came. 

I don't think the front axle locked in because in the past I always had to move the car a little forward or backward to get it to line up and engage.  Here there was no movement.  So it is possible the front did not engage.

[eaglefreek]

Most likely, no. Like you said, the front axle probably didn't engage.

[captspillane]

It's possible to drive a decent distance, like 30 miles. Moving it off the side of the road would not hurt it.

The viscous coupler naturally is supposed to heat up and slowly apply pressure as it does. They get ruined if you heat them up and keep them working for a half hour or so to finally get so hot they ruin the tiny O-ring and start to leak out the fluid into the rest of the case.

[carnuck]

If you do an excessive amount of different force front to rear you can tear it up VERY fast (I did it by using a metric torque wrench to 75 KG instead of 75 inch lbs to test it)

[Monkeyjoe]

Good, I was hoping it would be more durable than I feared.   Thanks for the positive info