1995 855 Non-Turbo: ABS and TRAC lights both ON

lcc014 · Post by **lcc014** » 05 Dec 2016, 19:51

I have these 2 lights (ABS & TRAC) on during driving below 30 MPH (no braking at all). It does not happen all the times; mostly once per week or 2 weeks. Lights would go off when car is restarted. Today it happened 2 times, also during "slow" speed driving in traffic jam after work and then later at night to supermarket.

When it first happened early this year, I tried to check DTC code but no code logged. What could be the cause of these lights to come on. ABS system self test noise at about 18 MPH is fine. I could always hear that.

Any suggestion is appreciated.

Thanks,

Ching-Ho Cheng

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 05 Dec 2016, 20:22

I have had the reluctance rings get clogged with brake crud and intermittently fault like you describe. The fronts are real easy to clean with brake cleaner, just squirt it in right behind the hub, but the rears take more effort since the rings are inside of the parking brake drum. You need to remove the caliper and the rotor to get to those.

You should have pulled at least one DTC error code on the ABS, it always posts a code for the car not being at minimum speed unless you can run really fast and read the code while the car is in motion.

...Lee

Post by **polskamafia mjl** » 05 Dec 2016, 23:41

I have the same problem on my 95. I suspect its actually the instrument cluster going bad in my case. Do you have any other faulty gauges? On my car the tach, coolant temp, and fuel level gauges are all intermittent along with the ABS and Tracs lights coming on periodically.

I swapped out my cluster once before with a cluster from a 96 I believe. Everything worked except for the speedometer which leads me to believe that the wiring to the cluster is working correctly.

lcc014 · Post by **lcc014** » 06 Dec 2016, 05:48

Ozark Lee wrote:I have had the reluctance rings get clogged with brake crud and intermittently fault like you describe. The fronts are real easy to clean with brake cleaner, just squirt it in right behind the hub, but the rears take more effort since the rings are inside of the parking brake drum. You need to remove the caliper and the rotor to get to those.

You should have pulled at least one DTC error code on the ABS, it always posts a code for the car not being at minimum speed unless you can run really fast and read the code while the car is in motion.

...Lee

Lee,

Can you describe more about the "rings" ? I don't quite understand that. Also, what DTC error code on ABS should I expect to get ? These 2 lights were on again this morning when I drove in down town Boston, less than 15 MPH.

Thanks,

Ching-Ho Cheng

lcc014 · Post by **lcc014** » 06 Dec 2016, 05:49

polskamafia mjl wrote:I have the same problem on my 95. I suspect its actually the instrument cluster going bad in my case. Do you have any other faulty gauges? On my car the tach, coolant temp, and fuel level gauges are all intermittent along with the ABS and Tracs lights coming on periodically.

I swapped out my cluster once before with a cluster from a 96 I believe. Everything worked except for the speedometer which leads me to believe that the wiring to the cluster is working correctly.

I don't have other fault lights coming on, only these 2.

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 06 Dec 2016, 08:35

The reluctance rings, they are also called tone rings, are gear shaped pieces that are on the end of the axles. On the fronts they nest into the steering knuckle just behind the hub. I have a picture of the rears here:

It is the sprocket shaped device just in front of the backer plate in the picture.

Each tooth on the ring sends a pulse to the ABS controller and that is how it determines if the car is skidding.

Are you able to read the DTC codes from the other positions, like A-2? It may be that you have a dirty switch in the A/B boxes under the hood and the system never sees the request to announce the error codes. The boxes are so seldom used that the pushbutton switch getting dirty is common.

...Lee

lcc014 · Post by **lcc014** » 06 Dec 2016, 14:33

Ozark Lee wrote:The reluctance rings, they are also called tone rings, are gear shaped pieces that are on the end of the axles. On the fronts they nest into the steering knuckle just behind the hub. I have a picture of the rears here:

DSC01924.JPG
It is the sprocket shaped device just in front of the backer plate in the picture.

Each tooth on the ring sends a pulse to the ABS controller and that is how it determines if the car is skidding.

Are you able to read the DTC codes from the other positions, like A-2? It may be that you have a dirty switch in the A/B boxes under the hood and the system never sees the request to announce the error codes. The boxes are so seldom used that the pushbutton switch getting dirty is common.

...Lee

Lee,

Thank you for the picture. I have no problem to read DTC code from A1, A2 ... I had done that a couple months ago. I will try to read code again and clean the rings with brake cleaner. To remove rear rotor, I had problem doing so for the driver side this summer when changing both rear rotors and hand-brake pads. Passenger side was piece of cake. For driver side rear rotor, even with rear brake star wheel loosen all the way, rotor still could not come out; it was just loose but block by the parking pads. I had to force it out back in the summer of this year, with a lot of force and many tries.....

Any suggestion why this was the case for driver side rear rotor ?

Thanks,

lcc014 · Post by **lcc014** » 11 Dec 2016, 08:43

I cleaned up both front wheels' rings this morning while changing to snow tires. I could not access rear rings without taking rear rotors off as Lee mentioned. So I did not clean rear rings with brake cleaner. I also retrieved code from A3, they are 141 and 142.

Any suggestion on these codes ?

Thanks,

Ching-Ho Cheng

lcc014 · Post by **lcc014** » 20 Dec 2016, 19:52

I search this forum and found that 141 was due to brake pedal sensor issue. I bought a new sensor which came with rubber O-ring, metal ring clip and 4 different color tips - white, green, blue and red. Different color tips of different length. Mine is white color. I followed the instruction found in this forum and pumped brake pedal 24 times. The old metal ring clip was very easy to undo with a long small flat head screwdriver. I pushed one end of metal ring clip and it popped out of the groove.

New sensor with tips

Old sensor

Sensor out of brake booster

I installed new metal ring clip first and then pushed new sensor into the hole until it could not go in anymore. I tried to pull it out slowly but not able to. That meant metal ring clip locked the new sensor in place.

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 20 Dec 2016, 20:01

Well done!

Pumping the brake pedal to bleed off the vacuum is an important part of the procedure since if you don't relieve the vacuum the O ring will get sucked into the brake booster when you try to remove the sensor. The O ring is pretty much irretrievable once it gets sucked in.

...Lee