Gatoraied

Hi, While driving home suddenly I get these messages: Service Transmission, Service Parking Brake, Service ABS, 4WD unavailable, Engine Icon lit. Yeah like Wow! Ok, I was on a busy Friday rush hour interstate highway and since everything seemed to be working, I drove home the remaining 15 miles with no apparent issues with driving functionality. Once there I assessed the messages.

1) I could find no issues shifting or driving the car in Drive & Rreverse. I did not try any other gears..
2) Initially the 4WD selector was set to "SNOW" and turning the selector **** did nothing and did not move the selection mode. That was its status when I got home and note that I did not change the 4WD mode.. After I disconnected & reconnected the battery, the 4WD selector indicator reverted back to auto and moved to all other modes. I did not try to check actual 4WD engagement though.
3)The brakes seemed to work without issue both before and after the message. I do not know if ABS is working though.
4)Parking brake works but is stuck in auto mode and cannot be changed, however, it seems to work as it normally does in auto mode. Note that I never used auto mode and it went into that mode on it's own.
5) The engine icon is lit (red) but honestly I'm not even sure it thats normal or if when on, theres an issue. There were no Check Engine Messages.

I did a check of all fluids, visible connectors and checked for blown and improperly inserted fuses. There were a few which seemed to snap down a bit while pressing down but post start there was no improvement and all messages reappeared.

I'm thinking and hoping that all those messages are caused by something gone haywire with a computer module and hopefully can be flashed to correct but... That could be wishful thinking. My thoughts though are that having all those messages appear at once would defy the odds that there was actually issues with everyone of them.

If anyone has had this issue I'd appreciate your feedback. This all happened a couple hours ago and no chance to schedule appointment at dealer. Not a place I like to go as they've rarely fixed anything before.

Thanks

lawsoncl

How's the battery? I've seen bizarre things happen if the battery starts going south and the voltage sags. This may end up being a communications bus error and not multiple mechanical issues.

Gatoraied

Hi, Yeah, Batteries can create issues but I did check battery and read 12.47 V which should be fine. It also was charging properly last time I saw the voltage when running @ 14.5V a few days ago. I'm hoping its just a connection issue and or something a re-flash will cure. Tomorrow I will try the 4WD. If it works then I'll feel a bit better that the drive train is seemingly in tact. ABS would be a bit more difficult but if it rains I may find a quite street or parking lot to slam the breaks. I hate going to the dealer worse than going to a dentist.
Thanks

Red1992XJ

Just curious, is the battery the original battery? I know when the battery in my mom's truck went bad, it went all of the sudden. Truck was stone cold dead. Even jump starting it, as soon as i disconnected the cables, the truck would shutoff.

When I put in a new battery, it sent a bunch of messages, but after clearing the system with a scanner and/or draining the computer memory, it ran fine.

I know it seems counterintuitive, but the battery being finnicky could cause issues because of the wacky computer systems in these trucks. If you plan on keeping the truck for awhile longer, if the battery is 5 years old, replacement is not a bad idea just for peace of mind so it will not strand you anywhere with even more problems.

lawsoncl

Yeah, don't do that. It's a very old school way of seeing if the alternator is working, but on modern cars with electronics it's a great way to fry the electronics.

I worked with a guy who accidentally did that testing his battery cutoff on a 94 Mustang. He put the cutoff right at the battery and had the alternator feed on the engine side of the switch. First time he tried to test it, the engine kept running very poorly for about 20 seconds until the engine computer started smoking. Side note - the Ford EEC-IV units have a very poor internal voltage regulation design that when it fails fries the rest of the board.

Gatoraied

The battery is less than 3 years old and was tested ok. I drove my Jeep to the dealer today and will find out soon what they think.
Thanks

Gatoraied

I thought I'd post a followup & remedy to my original post.

The remedy was replacing the right front ABS Wheel Speed Sensor, A $22.00 Mopar OEM part. The sensor was singled out as the culprit because of known issues that sensor causes. When my jeep was scanned for faults there were several which came up including the PTU which if replaced would have been a $3000.00 mistake. I thank my mechanic, an independent and not with jeep dealers, to use his troubleshooting database & his experience to identify the single component responsible for issue. I also think that my issue brings to focus the vulnerability of todays computer controlled vehicles where one component can cause so many possible issues.

I originally brought my Jeep to a Jeep dealer and made an appointment two days in advance. Dropped it off early AM on a Tuesday and never heard back from until I called them on Thursday afternoon to find out nothing was done! Zero! Bear in mind I brought it there foremost to have the faults properly scanned and to diagnose the issue and that was assuming there was an issue other than erasing possible erroneous faults. Three full days and nothing done but absolutely no communication!. I picked up my car and upon a recommendation from my son brought my Jeep to a family run independent auto repair shop. The mechanic diagnosed my issues that day, order the part and completed the work the following day by noon.
I don't want indict all Jeep dealers because of my experience however my experience was terrible and perhaps indicative of the state of many dealerships throughout the country. Badly managed service departments with mostly inexperienced people with a seemingly prioritized focus on oil changes. Ok, I'll spare everyone my real feelings about that dealer but I know theres many more like that one.

I should note that when I made my original post I was not sure exactly what was actually affected by the faults. Subsequently, I did determine that 4WD was in fact disabled. There was also an issue with the steering at times, usually when parking the car and turning the wheels acutely it seemed like the powersteering was not working and was very hard to turn the steering wheel. When driving at speed there was no apparent issues.

On a final thought I'd like to make some strong suggestions to many in these forums who although likely to be well intentioned should totally refrain from what appears to be a compulsion to reply to questions for which they have no clue to a real solution. It's not helpful and serves no useful purpose. I'm saying this not only because of this particular post but others I've made, all of which contained dozens of darts thrown but none even hit the board no less the bullseye.

lawsoncl

It makes sense that if the wheel speed sensor was bad, that 4wd and ABS would refuse to work. A bit bizarre that it would also complain about the trans and parking brake as a result.

Gatoraied

There were a total of 11 faults when read on a professional scanner. I only listed the fault messages shown on my display. Bizarre? Perhaps, but also indicative of the complexity of these cars. Remember too that as my mechanic said when he decided to focus on the Speed Sensor that it was still an educated guess, albeit qualified with a database as reference . He added that other component issues could have thrown similar faults.

What a lot of people don't know is many if not most repairs are corrected by "part swapping" not by parts identified to fix an issue. Why? because this is where we are in the auto repair business and not exclusive to dealers. Many mechanics are paid a commission for how many issues they can invent. Bring in a car like mine with fault issues like ABS, transmission, PTU etc. and how many customers would argue when presented with a worst case scenario? A scenario costing many hundreds or thousands? Most people freak out when the engine icon light comes on, no less when presented with several ominous faults which can be shown to a customer. Oh yes my friends it happens all the time. Once a car in in their hands, they have a customer exactly where they want them to be. Confused, scared and ultimately committed to carry out the dealer's or repair shop scam. Pay for things never repaired or pay for several things (parts swapping) when they knew it only required one.

When I told my dealer I wanted to take my car and declined any repairs, the service manger, very seriously, told me that would not be a smart decision. Furthermore he said the car was not drivable and driving it would cause an accident and thousands in damage . I said, Ok, I understand and thanked him. As his smile continued thinking I had acquiesced, I told him, " Since my car is not drivable I'm sure the least you could do after keeping my car for almost 4 days is to tow it to my home." Well guess what? Game Over!

Yes it happens all to often. As I've stated I'm not indicting the entire auto repair business but... It seems things are getting worse as technology continues to advance. For the unscrupulous, more ways to cheat the customer.

lawsoncl

Kudos to your independent mechanic for starting with the lowest (and cheapest) common denominator. Unfortunately there are too many mechanics, even dealers, who just blindly start replacing things the computer tells them are bad. There's too many home mechanics who also start "firing the parts canon" without testing anything. What's worse is the cheap chinese part they swap in could be bad out of the box, and almost certainly lower quality than oem. For example, it's very rare that the expensive engine computer is bad, but people seem to want to replace that right away.

Gatoraied

Indeed I'm lucky to have found an honest mechanic. Honestly, I thought that would be impossible. Having any type of work done requires a strong defensive posture and endless vigilance. Yes my mechanic bet on the wheel sensor and I think we both won because of his decision. He gained my respect and I received a great solution. Whats disturbing is knowing how many people are conned by unscrupulous repair companies but worse yet is that most don't even realize it! For them its the norm and likely to have a favorable view of the people that bilked them.
Here's a link my mechanic shared with me. It's a friend he worked with years ago. http://jimroal.com/repair.html