First, my situation. My SmartBar was rotated so that the exhaust hanger that supports it had its bushing facing the wrong way - it was intentionally rotated to never engage. It also clunked around a lot, to the extent that the SmartBar actuator would rest on the long-side shaft. You could push the middle of the bar and get over 3/4" deflection. After rotating the SmartBar to normal position, I was unable to get it to engage using any of the normal techniques; pushing the bar, rocking the truck, driving up on a curb. I loosened the housing bolts and sprayed silicone lube inside, tried again, no change.
Finally I took the entire bar off the truck, and this is what I found:
I don't know how that much dirt got in there. I actually scraped and vacuumed most of it up before taking the pictures. The side with the collar and yoke was completely solid with dirt. There was no way that mechanism was moving! I cleaned everything heavily with water, Purple Power, a toothbrush and a screwdriver. I could not easily figure out how to removed the splined parts on the shafts, so I left them on there.
Here is everything after cleaning:
I applied Royal Purple grease to all moving parts and the area under the splined parts to keep dust from increasing from the seals. I used anti-seize on the bolts and silicone RTV on the mating surfaces when I put everything back together.
I did some testing with the actuator. The first pic is with the actuator at neutral; this is swaybar engaged for normal driving:
This is the actuated state, where the swaybar is disengaged:
If you engage the SmartBar and push the metal rod next to the plastic piece, it will sense that it has locked. Even if you let go of that rod, it still thinks it is engaged. This might help someone doing troubleshooting, though I doubt this could ever give us false positive on engagement, as once it is engaged it should stay there.
The actuator is pretty strong, but the return spring is weak! If you have water ingress into the housing, it is possible to have corroded that spring and broken it. This is a possible cause to a permanently unlocked swaybar.
I manually connected the bar during assembly, and put everything back on the truck. I disconnected/connected several times in the driveway, and it seems fixed! The light would finally stay green, no more flashing. My helper said he heard a definite click when it both locked and when it unlocked.
I took it for a few test drives and really played with it, and found that the bar is now engaging as designed, if not even easier than normal. On the downside, there is slop in the collar/spline interface leading to there being about 1" of vertical movement available between the swaybar ends. This lets the body roll a moderate amount, then the swaybar will engage to prevent massive /dangerous) body roll.
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I'm happy with how it runs for now so some seals would be nice. I snapped an end link (it was a regular 2500 link) so I'm halfway to taking it off already! If you have a housing sitting around though I would take it. I actually love how fast my smartbar and lockers engage. All I did was clean the smartbar connector and interlaid, and locker magnets and used GP101's.