Yesterday I went through some water on the street and two blocks later my car locked up. I have a 2002 x type 3.0, and the dash lights up, radio works, but the dashboard says Gearbox fault. The car is stuck in park and will not turn over (even though the electricity comes on). I have disconnected the batter (which is only a few months old) and reconnected it in hope of resetting the ECU. How do I get the car to get out of park, and at least get to crank? I see this model has lots of problems with moisture in the ECU.

I had the car towed to a local shop, which was hard because it was stuck in park (cannot get into neutral)..

 

Desertdad, I am betting that you have water intrusion into the position sensor on the side of the tranny. So, in short, the tranny computer does not know what gear the car is in, so, it will prevent starting the engine for fear that as the car revs on initial start, it will cause you to move and crash into something. Hence the no start condition. It is possible that because of the water, it also told the car to go through an initial start check, which is why your car turned off as you were driving (my truck would light all sorts of lights on the dash whenever the truck was put in reverse, but that happened after running it through 4 feet of water). I would say to pull off the tranny position sensor and get it dried out and then see what you have then.

 

It may be a dumb question but where is the transmission position sensor????

 

JagX02, if you look on the side of the tranny, you will see it there. It is a big black box on the side with like 8 wires coming out of it.

 

Hey it might be a long shot but it could be an issue with the battery in my 02 X where it was once putting out the wrong voltage (IE not enough). Onr hat situation the car did say gearbox fault and would not start. Replaced the battery and I haven't had a transmission issue in 3 years since that happened.