No e-locker in reverse......sometimes

[Applejack]

Yesterday I went wandering in the snow with some friends and coming back up a road with a slight incline, those crappy Nitto TG's let me down again and could not claw my 4runner back up the road.
Ok I'm not going to make this about my tires which I hate. The question is; I locked my e-locker to try and make it up the road, I still had to rock it back and forth to make 6 feet of progress at a time. In doing so I would notice that while in reverse my drivers side rear wheel would not always be spinning.
Normal??

I know it was locked, light was on and I heard it click when I engaged it and disengaged it. And both tires happily moved going forward.

 

[corax]

Strange . . . what locks the axle to the diff itself is a sliding sleeve. If it's engaged then it should work in forward or reverse, there should be nothing to make it work better in one direction than the other. Find some dry pavement and test it out - make some tight turns in forward and reverse, you should feel one of the rear tires dragging when you're moving in either direction.

 

[Applejack]

It was definitely locked. I actually had to put my driver side in a ditch to get get out, otherwise I'd still be stuck. But here is another clue. I guess there was a point when none of my rears were turning, only the front. I could only see one wheel and assumed that the other was spinning.
So I wonder if there is a problem with my viscous coupling.