1999 Chevy Silverado 1500 5.3 4wd:
Truck threw a R Front wheel speed sensor code w/ABS light. I installed a new OEM sensor yesterday. Today the ABS starts acting real funky and is activating at random, sometimes making me barely able to stop the truck. The ABS light comes on again, and when the ABS system is inactive the car stop fines (obv just without ABS). I'm pretty sure its just a faulty new part, thats fine. My question is in the time being before I get a new sensor, do I leave the current one as is and risk the car not stopping, or do I unplug it completely? Will unplugging the sensor turn off the ABS system or will I still experience erratic braking?
Please advise. I have work in the morning a need this car functional ish
Truck threw a R Front wheel speed sensor code
post the code per instructions please
I'm pretty sure its just a faulty new part
how do you know? Have you tested the wiring and connectors? The reluctor wheel on the hub?
do I leave the current one as is and risk the car not stopping
don't drive it.
Pulling the ABS fuse might help, but you'll still have unstable braking.
Do you REALLY want to start taking chances with bad brakes on the road? I sure don't want to be on the same road as you. If commercial inspections caught you, they would not let you drive it away for sure.
I have work in the morning a need this car functional ish
better call the rental now
@imperator C0222 & C0223
C0222 & C0223
these are the troubleshooting procedures for those codes.
I don’t need the ABS working immediately. I would prefer to just deactivate it. What is the easiest way to do that? Pull the fuse?
yeah you kind of do. modern ABS took over the job of valve proportioning . You don't even know what the issue is. Scotty says over and over "don't guess". Driving with a malfunctioning brake system is pretty irresponsible.
@imperator well the brakes aren’t acting improperly, just the ABS part (i realize they go hand in hand). When the ABS isn’t activating they work fine. Obviously I don’t want to drive it with its issue but I gotta get to work ya know. I’m looking for a bandaid fix until i can get a new part in the mail.
When the ABS light is on it brakes fine. When the light turns off/comes on intermittently it brakes weird. If i disconnect the sensor entirely then the ABS system shouldn’t be activate at all correct?
the brakes aren’t acting improperly,
until you have a panic braking event .. and then your truck doesn't stop.
I gotta get to work ya know
right right smoking a family on the highway is much better finding something else to drive. Your boss/clients will totally understand when you call him from the police station. if you can't afford to miss a day of work, you certainly can't afford an at-fault accident ... or worse
If i disconnect the sensor entirely then the ABS system shouldn’t be activate at all correct?
I thought I already answered this question. Besides, the ABS system isn't getting a signal from the sensor anyway as you can see from the code chart I posted (same thing as unplugging it), and how is that going for you?
By default when an ABS braking system fails it is supposed to revert back to 'standard' braking. If you're using a good OEM part which was installed properly then you should troubleshoot the circuit next as noted in the charm.li links @mmj gave you. I doubt any forum members here are going to suggest how to make your brakes less safe..I would prefer to just deactivate it.
C0222 & C0223
I don’t need the ABS working immediately. I would prefer to just deactivate it. What is the easiest way to do that? Pull the fuse?
When the ABS light is on it brakes fine.
That's because you haven't locked up your brakes. You still have "standard" brakes, but they can lock up if you push too hard on them. If you lock up your brakes, you cannot steer anymore and you will take longer to stop because the tire isn't rolling anymore, it's skidding (rolling a tire is static friction, skidding a tire is kinetic friction, which is significantly less than static friction).
If i disconnect the sensor entirely then the ABS system shouldn’t be activate at all correct?
Yes, and you don't want that to happen. I have a 1979 Pontiac Catalina. I was going the speed limit, and the road was wet. I was doing 55 in the 55. I thought there was a 2-way stop, with both side streets stopping, not a 4-way stop. I've driven in that area many times over the years, but my memory was a little fuzzy. When I realized that I was going to blow the stop sign, I panicked for a second at hit the brakes, simultaneously, the mechanical engineer in me told me that slamming on the brakes too hard will cause the opposite effect and I'll skid. I wound up stopping right at the stop line without skidding, like I had meant to do it. I was shaken up, so was my wife, who is an electrical engineer. I got lucky. Don't drive without ABS (Anti-Lock Brake System is the full term).
@justin-shepherd plus it's a pickup which is already unbalanced, so when he hits the brakes , the truck dives and take all the weight off the rear wheels . They lock up now he's fishtailing around.
@justin-shepherd It helps to learn threshold braking. You can't react as fast as an ABS system and have to unlearn just jamming on the brake in an emergency, but it can help when driving a non-ABS vehicle in slippery conditions. A lot us older folks spent decades driving pre-ABS vehicles and learned to do this to one extent or another. (In fact my current daily driver is my first and only car equipped with ABS and I've been driving since the late 1960s. I had to unlearn trying to do threshold braking while driving it and instead let the computer do its thing.)
@Chuck Tobias your pre-ABS cars had proportioning valves to help out too
The first car I drove regularly was an '86 BMW 528e, which obviously doesn't have ABS. I partly honed my skills while driving that car. It was snowing and I had only been driving for around a month or so. The roads were untreated and I started skidding a few times. I learned to basically pump the brakes, and anticipate slowing down way before I needed to. When I got my '94 BMW, which did have ABS, I "experimented" with that car when it was snowing once. Per my calculations, on snow-covered roads, I could only reach a speed of 25 MPH before my tires would start skidding instead of rolling. It was the middle of the night on a 4-lane road with an open median, so I put it to the test. Sure enough, around 25 MPH, I felt my tires starting to slip, so I let off the gas and started going more like 10-15 MPH.
@imperator A lot of those cars had lousy, undersized drum brakes on all four wheels. Some (like the 1966 Toronado) were so bad they were practically criminal.
An exception was my 1965 Marlin, which came with power front disc brakes standard. (Unusual for the time, as was its dual master cylinder.) However that car did not have a proportioning valve. Instead, it had a unique "non-servo" rear drum brake system that approximated the action of the front discs to prevent rear wheel lockup under hard braking. It worked well enough but was a pretty strange setup for which parts have been unavailable for a very long time now.