Well, I took the X out for a little pre-death valley shakedown run yesterday and ran into an issue. Actually, I considered CANVAZ as the shakedown trip, and she performed flawlessly. But yesterday, while playing around a little in the hills near my house, I couldn't get the 4WD to engage.
I was cruising around in 2WD and when I approached a steep climb, I came to a stop (still on flat ground) and reached over to switch it into 4-HI. The display near the odometer showed the front wheels trying to engage for about a half second, and then the display shut completely off and the 4WD light came on solid. I put the X in park, switched the 4WD switch back to 2WD mode, shut the key all the way off and waited about 30 seconds before starting it back up. The display came back (and showed I was still in 2WD) and the 4WD light was gone, so I tried it again and the exact same thing happened. I backed out and left the way I came, and tried it a few more times throughout the afternoon/evening with the same results every time.
I'm pretty convinced that it's something electronic since it's resetting the error when I shut the car off and re-triggering it when I try to engage 4 wheel drive. I dropped it off at the dealer last night (still under warranty) and called Motorpig77 to see if he had any ideas. Ironically, he had a very similar issue earlier in the year and the dealership determined it to be a bad "module" for the 4WD system (that's what the tech told me), which they replaced under warranty.
Well, my tech (same guy who replaced the "module" in Motorpig's rig) just called me and said he was replicating the problem with every attempt this morning and was even getting a code when it would happen. He didn't tell me what the code was specifically, but it was something kind of generic like a 4WD mis-shift. In an attempt to see if he could throw a different code to narrow down the bad part, he flip-flopped two of the four relays that control the 4WD system and the problem simply went away. It will engage 4-HI, 4-LO, and go back into 2WD just fine now. He switched the relays back and still can't replicate the issue anymore. He did say that one of the two relays looked to have some physical damage on the top, possibly from a screw that pokes through the top of the fuse box cover that holds my dual battery solenoid in place. But that solenoid has been installed for over a year (and I presume the damage to the top of the relay was done when it was installed), and I've never had the issue, so I have a hard time believing that the relay was damaged to the point that it wasn't working right. Plus, it doesn't really make sense that it's working fine now if one of the relays in in-fact bad. I suppose the relay could be having intermittent issues and it stopped acting up for now when he manipulated it.
He's going to keep playing with it and has already ordered a replacement relay. Just curious what everyone else's thoughts are. My fear is that If I do have a bad actuator/module like Motorpig had, I want to get it replaced before the DV trip.
