ABS problem

[deeclue]

My brakes have started acting up as of late and my preliminary googling did not really turn up the same problems I'm having - it can be hard finding the right wording that surfaces what you're looking for.

Lately, most commonly in the morning, (but that might just be temperature related) as I am breaking and slowly coming to a stop my ABS engage. It happens for the final few feet before the car stops moving. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with speed or how hard I press the brakes. Its like something is confused and things the wheel motions doesn't match my speed or something. It doesn't appear to be an issue after I've been driving for a while.

Any ideas? My ABS light is burned out. Its on the list of things to fix. But the ABS clearly works, its just coming on when its not needed.

Thanks!

[Mook613]

Check for lots of metal shavings/particulate built up on the tips of your ABS sensors. It could be getting poor reads of the teeth that tell the sensor when the wheels are locked.
May also want to clean off those teeth.

[deeclue]

Oh cool, ok. Thanks I'll check that out. I also forgot to mention that my instrument cluster clearly has some gear/teeth issues going on because my odometer is turning very slowly - like 30 miles per tank of gas slowly. So I have no idea if those systems interact by maybe my speed is being reported improperly? I'm definitely going to try cleaning off the sensors first though.

[jeffnhiscars]

You more than likely need new odo gears which would have no impact on your abs.

[deeclue]

Update: I pulled the sensors and cleaned off all the metal shavings and gunk and now the problem seems to have gone away - so that fixed it! (still haven't addressed the odo gears issue)

Thanks!

[deeclue]

aaaand update to the update: its still occasionally doing it, but not every time all the time like it was before. There are times even if I don't feel the ABS kick on that I'll feel the brake pedal drop a little when reaching a stop (which still might be the ABS). I don't know - I'm considering disabling the ABS until I figure out what's causing this.

[jeffnhiscars]

If cleaning the sensors was a temp fix and now it's happening again you may want to take some brake cleaner to the abs trigger wheels.

A slow sinking pedal at stop points to a failing master cylinder. Check your fluid level and bleed to eliminate those.

[deeclue]

Side note on the sinking pedal: its just the ABS chattering. I can pump the pedal and hold it hard while at a stop and it doesn't move downward so I am going to assume the master cylinder is fine.

Update: My ABS light had never worked since I had this car so I pulled the cluster to replace the bulb and found that there hadn't been one in there to begin with. So I put a new bulb in and now it all lights up when starting the car.

Not surprisingly this has zero effect on the ABS triggering while coming to a stop BUT I can not confirm that when the ABS is chattering the light does not illuminate. I have no idea if this means something but I'm guessing it's supposed to light up when that happens.

At this point I think I'm going to replace the ABS replay and see where that gets me. New sensors are expensive enough that I'll probably just kill the system entirely if this doesn't fix it. Any other ideas beyond that?