Car Mechanics (UK)

ABS fault

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My friend has a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 3.0-litre diesel engine and auto transmissi­on. His problem started with the ABS warning light coming on. The car then began to judder when starting off from a standstill and when going round corners. This seemed like a computer management problem caused by ABS sensors failing and telling the system to go into 4x4, even when this had not been selected.

My friend’s local garage replaced both the front and rear clutch sensors, which made no difference and resulted in the car refusing to shift out of first gear and limiting speed to a 5mph maximum. He then had to have the car transporte­d to a Chrysler main dealer. Their first diagnosis was that the rear diff might need replacing, which turned out to be a red herring. Their second diagnosis suggested that the front nearside wheel bearing assembly, which contains the ABS sensor, needed replacing. This was done and seemed to fix the problem.

Six months later, the same ABS warning light and the juddering when starting off has reoccurred. After three days of this, a further red warning light on the dash illuminate­d, indicating a parking brake problem. My friend has never used the parking brake, instead always leaving the vehicle in ‘Park’ when stationary. Now the transmissi­on refuses to move out of third/fourth gears at any speed, and low 4x4 cannot be manually selected and cruise control is inoperable.

Does this sound like software or hardware problems? Also, is there a sensibly-priced code reader on the market that would identify all the fault codes without resorting to main dealer prices?

Bruce Harding

Given that the cruise control does not operate, I would suspect the problem to be either a fault with the software or the control unit. The best way to get to the source of the problem would be to connect a code reader. However, after checking with the manufactur­ers of different readers, they confirmed that most tools target the US market for Chrysler as they have relatively low sales in Europe. The US market traditiona­lly hasn’t bought diesels, so the diesel model support tends to be patchy in diagnostic tools. For this reason, the only viable option may be to have a main dealer diagnose the problem.

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