Failure of 3 switches in the Super Select 4WD!

[Curly]

I recently experienced an issue with the Super Select 4WD that almost got me stuck in the dunes in Kgalagadi.

We had been in the park for 2 weeks driving in 4H, had no issues in the soft sands around Mata Mata and then we headed up to Gharagab for a few nights. Brilliant lion sightings as they were in between the chalets for 3 days!

When we were heading out from Gharagab there are about 10 dunes that require crossing and 3 or 4 of them had been totally chewed up by those who get stuck and continue spinning their wheels.

On approaching one such dune, I stopped, put the SWB in neutral and moved the Super Select 4WD lever to 4HLC and then 4LLC. I have been doing this for the last 10 years and always ended up with all of the indicators showing all of the wheels lit, the central diff lit and the 4L lit. However, this time all lights were out and only the central diff light was flashing. It remained like that, no matter what I did with the Super Select 4WD lever.

I determined that the SWB was still in 4H and that the central diff had not engaged. I managed to negotiate the dunes without any stoppages, luckily!

Once out from the dunes I found that, although the central diff light remained flashing, the Super Select 4WD was able to select 2H and 4H! This was fine, so I continued on till the end of the stay.

I was able to move to 2H for the run to Upington where I had Zelco Motors on standby waiting for me. They were fantastic and spent an hour checking everything (at no cost!!) and determined that there must have been a switch failure. They could not get the 4HLC and 4LLC to engage and it was now stuck in 2H. They said that I could head back to my dealership in Cape Town to let them deal with the problem.

Mitsubishi Cape Town determined that 3 switches were faulty and these had to be replaced at a cost of about R4K

They suggested that I engage the Super Select 4WD regularly to ensure that the switches are used in the future, but could not give any explanation on what could cause 3 switches in a 2015 Pajero 3.2 DiD to fail!

This has me worried!! Had I been in a situation where I could not get out of the dunes with 4H, I would have still been there today!

Has anyone on the forum experienced this switch failure issue before?

[KurtG]

Yes, about 2 years ago the same happened to me on my 2014 SWB and I had to have all 4 switches replaced at a cost of about R5500 at Mitsubishi Rivonia.

[Curly]

Thanks KurtG

Mitsubishi Cape Town said that they had a number of such issues with switches failing, to which I replied that maybe this should not fall under Warranty, but Maintenance Plan!!

Cheers

[vanasp]

Hi All

I find this thread interesting as I had a similar issue in the Kgalagadi in May this year and had some fun getting over the dunes between Nossob and Mabua towing a off road trailer. My vehicle would be in 4HLC and then suddenly switch to 2H. I had some issues the day before and had disconnect the battery and put it down to the computer being a bit confused.

This week I was towing my caravan and had the car in 4H for nearly 1-hour and then noticed the 2 x front green indicator lights were flashing as if 4H was not correctly engaged. I slowed and selected 2H and then tried to re-engage 4h but still had the front greens flicking. I then selected 2H and drove in 2H for a few minutes and then re-engaged 4H and had 4 x solid greens. No further issues for the rest of the drive.

I have not done any fault finding as yet, but found this very strange as the fault appears to be very intermittent. If the vacuum pipes had a fault I would expect the fault to persist and not be intermittent.

Nothing worse than in intermittent fault.