Jeep Renegade ‘SERVICE ENGINE’ Light ON = NO 4WD

Over the weekend, Cindy and I got a chance to take our Jeep Renegade Trailhawk out on an exploration trip, to the middle of Nevada and while we were roaming around, we had our check engine or “SERVICE ENGINE” light come. Of course, being that this was more than likely an emissions related problem, we didn’t give it much thought and continued on our way. Certainly, nothing appeared to be wrong and really, there wasn’t much we could do until we could get our Renegade to a dealership and have them scan it to see what codes are being thrown. Anyway, the reason why I’m posting this is because there was one point along the way where I really wanted to lock in our 4WD to help get us up a rutted hill and was surprised to see that it wouldn’t turn on – or at least, pushing the 4WD lock button wouldn’t get it to light up. I tried turning off the engine, waited a bit and then restarted it but still got nothing. Fortunately, the 4WD system on the Renegade is always kind of on anyway and so I was still able to get up the hill in spite of not having it locked in but had I wanted to use the 4LO mode or any of the other traction control options, they would not have been available to me. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed by this.