ABS light

[Joel Weiss]

During a very long stretch of stop and go driving the other day with high outside temps, I think one of my brakes locked up enough to trigger the ABS light.  I could see a slightly elevated temperature on one rear wheel but after ~10 minutes of open road driving it cooled back to normal.

At present the brakes appear to work fine.  I have no indication of brake drag, no wheel heating, etc.  But the ABS light is still on.  I pushed the button that reads out the ABS code but that doesn't reset the system.  Is there some way to cancel the code so I can see if it re-occurs?  As far as I can tell the braking system is operating totally normally--no pulling even during a fairly fast stop today when someone cut me off!

Of course these are the great air-over-hydraulic Bosch brakes.

[Karl Welhart]

Joel,

Sounds like you may have a caliper dragging problem and causing the rotor to overheat.  This situation will cause the ABS sensor to melt and turn on the ABS light.  

Warning: When your ABS light is "on", the ABS braking system in not operational...  Anyway, sometime the sensor can be fixed but most often will have to be replaced on the affected wheel.  

The brakes will work as normal, just will not have ABS.  If you are having the dragging brake problem, which is very common on this brake system.  I would also consider checking that as well as before correcting the ABS problem.

[Gerald Farris]

Joel,
Karl is right about your problem is probably a wheel speed sensor. If so, it only affects the ABS system, and it has no effect on your base brakes. However, like Karl said, if the base brakes are overheating they can be the reason for the sensor failure.

Gerald  

[Bill Sprague]

Beaver built mine so that when a went over a BIG BUMP, the sensor plug would unplug.  There was not enough slack in the wire they wrapped around the axle.  I unwrapped one turn around the axle and got enough slack that the ABS light has not come on since.