[WVdeerhunter]

I just bought a used truck. Sometimes when I first drive the brake pedal kinda jerks like when you are sliding on ice... Soon if not right away the ABS and Slip light come on. Ive heard people say its the abs sensor. If so How would I know which one it is and where its bad? Anybody else have this issue? The 4wd doesn't always engage properly either. sometimes if you restart the truck the 4wd comes in perfect. Any advice?

 

[Clint]

The dealers scanner can identify which wheel it is. The rears are about $180 each so too pricey to start just trying parts.
The abs motor by the master cylinder can have a fault out there.

Clint

 

[ScubasteveH]

the brake pedal kinda jerks like when you are sliding on ice... Soon if not right away the ABS and Slip light come on. Ive heard people say its the abs sensor. If so How would I know which one it is and where its bad? Anybody else have this issue?

I'm chasing this very issue on my 04. One tool that has really helped me is car gauge pro for android. Paired with a bluetooth OBDII adapter, the app will talk to just about everything in our trucks (not just the engine). You can also run live tests on the ABS system to check functionality. Mine was showing front left sensor and abnormal signal codes. I pulled the sensor and cleaned some crud off solving that but the abnormal signal still remains. I've read that wheel bearings can cause this so my next step is to pull the hub and check those.

Unfortunately it's only available for android.
APP: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=Scantech.CarGaugePro&hl=en
Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/Vgate-Blueto...d=1474111331&sr=8-11&keywords=bluetooth+obdii

Hope this helps!

 

[WVdeerhunter]

Hey thanks guys! So I plugged it in finally and It says front left abs sensor 1 and front left abs sensor 2... So now at least I got it narrowed down. Now my question is, does it just need new sensors, and is this something I could change myself? or could it just be some crud on the sensors or maybe a wheel bearing? I guess I wont know until I have a closer look but anybody got any tips? Also what brand of sensors should I get? would I be best off getting the oem or are aftermarket ones ok?

 

[ScubasteveH]

It's hard to say but I'd start with a cleaning first. That fixed my issue 2 years ago. I'm not sure how easy it is to access the 2nd gen tone ring without pulling the hub but I imagine you can get to it much like mine by pulling the sensor. I wet down the tone ring with simple green (squirting it in the hole while spinning the rotor) and after a short while, blew it out with compressed air. It did the trick for the front left sensor code but the abnormal signal code still remained. Hopefully you have better luck.

 

[WVdeerhunter]

Ok thanks for the input! The other day i jacked it up wiggled the wheel and found that there's some give in the bearing. That probably is the cause of the codes on mine. So I'll probably just get the whole hub/bearing assembly which comes with sensors and all so I'm hoping that will fix the problem.