Warning Light Hell

Not a good start to the year, for both of the 'road cars' in our household.

On New Year's Eve, the Jeep auto gearbox threw a little clonk. It followed this up with a a warning light and a vary lazy approach to changing up a gear. With help from pages at www.wjjeeps.com I found how to get the error codes from the system:

Turn ignition key on, off, on, off and on again.
The odometer then displays any engine management error codes.

Unfortunately, looking up that error code on the web only told me that further diagnosis is required with an OBD-III gadget that can interrogate the Gearbox ECU in the car. First option then was to use my local Chrysler Jeep dealer - estimate half-an-hour to an hour of their time, at 90-odd pounds per hour, plus VAT. Ouch.

Didn't like that prospect, so used my preferred American Car specialists, who do my routine servicing for this car. North American Motor Co http://www.northamericanmotorco.com/ (NAMCO). These guys are always helpful and agreed to do the check with their [non-factory] gadget, although no promises from them they could read the European ECU on this particular car. No worries, they found a series of error codes and then contacted a gearbox specialist to find out what those codes meant.

Ok, the bad news is that the gearbox is now in for a recon/rebuild to fix the problem, but I do look forward to getting it back (not looking forward to the bill, though).

Then today I had a warning lamp appear on the dash of my Evo :-(
That didn't clear after power off; oil level fine; engine appears to be running normally enough.
Called the local Mitsubishi/Ralliart specialist on this one. Suggestion is that a sensor has probably failed, as this is the ECU warning light. I won't be back that way till the weekend, but they can check it for me then. Assured that this shouldn't be a problem to drive if the engine behaves and sounds normal in the mean time.

I do have the Evo OBD-II cable to connect my laptop to the Mitsu ECU, but have to find out if any of the various logging packages I have access to will tell me the error code(s) from the engine management system. It would be nice to at least know what it suggests is failing before taking it to the main dealer for confirmation. Always the option of using an Evo specialist otherwise, but to be honest, the dealer is less than a mile from my home and has been reasonable so far (if you can call the factory 4500-mile service interval reasonable).

Will post an update if/when I get to the root of this problem.

Cheers
John