I have a code that says there is too much air gap in my front left wheel sensor but it's pushed fully home. Is there any kind of test such as continuity/resistance test that I can do to tell if the sensor has gone bad or itermittent wiring?

The warning light will go off for short periods but always returns even when I have cleared the code.

Thanks
Alan
98 D1

 

How badly do you want ABS?

 

Hey Spike, I HATE ABS, I think it was the cause of my wrecked XK8. I was doing a lot of twisting turns in terrible wet weather and I got out of a curve onto an uphill straight (doing about 20mph or less) and just touched the gas and the car turned 90 degrees straight intoa rock face! No sterring control whatsoever and I felt the front left wheel "grab". The more I think about it the more I think that sensor didn't release after the curve so when I touched the gas 3 wheels were accelerating and one was braking. It happened in a heartbeat with no ABS warning lights prior.

A friend of mine had an XK8 and woke up near dead in hospital. he was wide awake driving and they found the car upside down in a ditch and he swears it was ABS. makes you wonder huh?

But I live at 6100ft near a ski resort so we get a lot of icy weather,,,,If I could do a relatively cheap fix I would do it.

 

Well the ABS on DI's is terrible and prone to failure, some times resulting in a crash.
It is common for the brake pedal to fight you and you loose all most all stopping power, when my wife almost rear ended a school bus I fixed mine once and for all.
Open the hood, on the passenger fender there is a fuse box, open it, fine the ABS fuse, 30 amp if I remember right, remove fuse, close fuse box, close hood, no more ABS, no more ABS issues, she will stop every time after that.
If you wind up driving off a cliff that is all you.
Mine has been disabled for almost 2 years now, mine is due to a bad ABS modulator.

I do not know how to test a ABS wheel sensor, but there are 3 of them on a DI, one on each front wheel and one for both rear wheels and they run about $400 each.
A used ABS modulator is about $1500.

 

I may just do that.
BTW EBAy always has several D1 modulators used that run around $90 with shipping.
Used sensors run about $60 and i think I saw a company with new sensors at $336+tax

 

Used D1 modulators can be had cheap most people just disable the ABS.

 

I have not priced the parts in 2 years so I guess I was wrong on y $$ figures huh? lol

 

Hi Alan,

Those prices seem pretty decent.

As for ABS, it is humanly impossible to react as fast as an ABS system!!!
With that being said, I like having it both on my slow moving LR and more so on my sports car.
The safety of my kids far outweigh the small cost of repair.

In the past I have measure the resistance (with a good DMM) of each sensor to find the failing sensor. The failing sensor will be several hundred to way off in resistance compared to what is functioning.

Ik, what is the proper resistance for for your vehicle, this unfortunatly I dont know.
My suggestion would be to check the others and look for a huge discrepency on one of the sensors.

Hope this helps.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Regards,

Nick

 

I totally agree about the reaction time and safety aspects of ABS in general terms.

 

If you have an extra $650 to burn get a hawkeye scanner. You can test each wheel's ABS functionality and also read the live data from the sensors.