I have a 03 Lancer ES. My service engine soon lights has been on for about a week, i brought it to an autozone and they told me they could not check my service engine soon light. They told me that comes on when a routien maintence needs done and needs to be brought to a dealership. Im working on trying to get it into a dealership but back to the issue, i drove my car yesterday to the gas station and shut it off when i pulled in, a few mins later i came back out to leave, stuck my key in the ignition and cranked it over. I tryed about 10 times, it would crank each time and try to fire for a second but that was it. So proceeding to call my wife i shut the key off for about 5-6 mins and tryed it again and it started right up. So i drove it home when i got home i shut it off, tryed it again and the same thing again. After 5-6 mins it will start, so once it started i immedatly shut it down and it even running for 5 seconds you still need to let it set for 5-6 mins before it will start..............any ideas, i appreciate you stopping bye

 

Autozone should have done it but I've heard some locations won't do it for one reason or another. Perhaps pressure from local repair shops or a dealer that wants to charge $60 for 30 seconds of work, who knows. Call around to parts shops and see if one will scan your car for codes. Service Engine Soon will give you an OBD code that you can post back here and we can go from there. It's not a "routine maintenance" light.

 

Yea i ended up bring it to a Mitsubishi Dealer and ate the 51.00 bucks (which is really cheap) to have the techs hook my car up and they told me the reason its having a starting problem is cause the cam sensor is going bad an when you shut it down the cam sensor is hot and needs to cool down before it starts so im going to replace that plus they told me the timing belt and tensioner needs replaced and since its got 117,000 miles on it im going to replace it since it needed replaced at 100,000 miles so if any one has this problem heres a place to start. Thanks for all the help this web site is full of the best imformation

 

Did replacing the Cam Sensor work? We have the same problem with our '04 Lancer Ralliart and can't quite figure out the issue is.