My husband and I JUST bought our vehicle less than 6 months ago so it's fully under warranty. But I wanted to see if anyone was familiar with this. We have a 2009 Outlander, LS model. I drove it from my home this morning and it ran completely fine. I got to my destination, parked and then decided I wanted to reverse to straighten out the parking job. When I went to put the car from park to reverse there was a loud thunk and the check engine light came on. I returned it into park turned off the ignition and started it up again, reversed it a bit and drove it forward just to test and everything seemed fine (I didn't have time to drive it around) However the check engine light remains solidly lit.Very strange--wondering what Mitsubishi will say tomorrow..in the meantime anyone have thoughts on what could have happened? Thanks!

 

Loud thunk + check engine light = very bad

Maybe an issue with the tranny.

Let us know what mitsu says is wrong with it. Good luck.

 

Will definitely share what they say. I was worried it could be tranny related. Whatever it is, it's definitely not cool when there's only 7000k on it! Thanks for the thoughts.

 

exactly the same thing happened to me when our 2007 was 6 months old. Read this:

https://mitsubishiforum.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=25071

they changed the relays according to the TSB and we haven't had any trouble since. Interesting that the 2009 still has the same issue.

 

Weird that a relay would cause a clunk like that.

TCP, did they (or the TSB) say which relay they replaced?

 

That's really interesting that there were some similar experiences.

We just heard from Mitsubishi and they said that they picked up nothing on their diagnostics and that the engine light was off when they turned it on. They blamed it on the gas cap--which is lame, I didn't imagine that clunk! On one hand I'm definitely happy that there is nothing major wrong with the truck, but on the other, I am still a little curious about the whole thing.

Thanks for all your thoughts!

 

I didn't know the gas cap could make a loud clunk when changing gears?

Wow, live and learn.

At least you are under warranty if anything else happens.

 

I've attached the TSB they did. The zip file contains a newer(?) version of the original one. I would actually think the relays themselves are ok, but the location of the fuse box seems to allow moisture to effect it sometimes. Some setting electronic control doesn't realize you are shifting into gear(forwards or backwards) and doesn't set itself right. It was quite a clunk and scared the life out of me...but it hasn't happened since and the outlander is working great otherwise...not really a concern. If it makes it through the 10year engine/drivetrain warranty without any problems, I doubt it'll cause any other issue in the long term.