What's with this ABS fuss?

[joncrz]

woohoo bump for ford focus hatch! I have one... and I think it is shitty but god damn if it isnt reliable and cheap to fix. I love it in that aspect. Help me understand what about it was enthusiast oriented ? Honestly I kinda like how it looks but I figured no ABS/electric locks/no pwr windows was just a cost saving feature...

[ELVA164]

I'm 100% in agreement with roysneon on this one. I didn't have ABS on my car for about a year and the car drove fine. I now have it and it still drives just fine. I have never encountered a situation where my ABS ruined my driving experience; all it can do is allow me to have more driving experiences in an un-smashed car.

Honestly I kinda like how it looks but I figured no ABS/electric locks/no pwr windows was just a cost saving feature...

If you call that stuff "enthusiast-oriented," it sounds a lot better! ;D

[Wh33lhop]

While I am completely confident in my ability to threshold brake in normal situations, when you are startled, all bets are off. ABS is a great safety net.

[slammin.e28]

If it works, I'm happy. I won't go disabling a working system.

If it doesn't work, I may or may not fix it. Depends on if there are more pertinent issues.

[Roysneon]

If it works, I'm happy. I won't go disabling a working system.

If it doesn't work, I may or may not fix it. Depends on if there are more pertinent issues.

After all I've said, mine is not working, I tried a few things and haven't gotten it working yet, but I'm not gonna rip the damn thing out so I can talk about how I don't need it.

[slammin.e28]

After all I've said, mine is not working, I tried a few things and haven't gotten it working yet, but I'm not gonna rip the damn thing out so I can talk about how I don't need it.

I admit, I took it out of the V8 car, but that was because I didn't want to deal with plumbing it into the Tilton setup.

My Rover it's built into the master cylinder. It has some electrical fault I can't figure out, so I took the bulb out. English wiring diagrams look like a kindergartner drawing spaghetti. It's not supposed to pass inspection since it's a combined system.

My M3 (sold now) I actually fixed the light. Yay me!

My grey e28 ABS doesn't work, but the lamp isn't on, so I never messed with it. It's the only car I could ever have used ABS on. More than a few close calls locking up the wheels, one including a dark stormy night and a large tree branch in the road.

My red e28 is fine as far as I know, never went out and tried the ABS.

[E30 Wagen]

ABS is a really nice thing to have on icy roads. Every BMW I've owned has had working ABS at over 200k miles (except for my '84 318i of course).

If you've got a nice car with working system, then you're a retard to take it out for the sake of fuhraze. That is all.

[matthugie]

I have kept it in the car I autox and HPDE, but it doesn't know what to do with UUC's BBK and aggressive pads.

[Northern]

My iS has working ABS, my iX does not, but I plan to eventually fix that when I start driving it again.

When I drove the iS in the snow a few years ago, I found abs was a nice idiot proof way to know when to ease up on the brakes. I found it increased my stoping distance on ice compared to quasi-threshold braking, but it was good to have anyways.

I admit, I took it out of the V8 car, but that was because I didn't want to deal with plumbing it into the Tilton setup.

If I ever V8 swap my m3 shell, I'll probably get rid of abs for the same reason.

[P Arkus]

ABS is a really nice thing to have on SNOWY roads. Every BMW I've owned has had working ABS at over 200k miles (except for my '84 318i of course).

If you've got a nice car with working system, then you're a retard to take it out for the sake of fuhraze. That is all.

Fixed that for you. ABS is the worst thing you could possibly have on ICY roads.

[TurboJake]

Fixed that for you. ABS is the worst thing you could possibly have on ICY roads.

Ummm... What?!

It takes a tire a lot longer on ice to return to the same rotating speed as the vehicle velocity as it does when compared to a car with a sytem that prevents a lockup, and maintains a regulated rotational speed, and momentum. It's a really, really nice thing to have just in case.

I do hope you're trolling.

Also, 99% of the time, the ABS on an E30 doesn't work because of the relay, which is a 15 minute start to finish solder fix.

[dnguyen1963]

Relax everyone...ABS is one of the proven and useful technologies coming out of the auto industries. Be grateful if your car has it.

[P Arkus]

Maybe its personal preferrence or just my braking technique then, but driving both cars with ABS and cars without ABS in a climate where it snows and the weather is freezing for 8 months of the year, I find ABS absolutely useless when on ice. Snow is a different story, but when braking on ice, you cant even touch the pedal without the ABS pulsing and kicking in. I've always felt much more comfortable pumping my own brakes on ice than relying on ABS.

I will say however that I am one of the people that hates the automated systems in cars. I hate automatics, I hate traction controls, I hate ABS, and all the other driving features that take control away from the driver. Maybe because I learned to drive cars that didnt have these features so I learned how to control them in bad situations without needing the computer to take over for me.

[dnguyen1963]

The laws of physics always rule at the end of the day no matter how good a driver you are. ABS can only help.

[TurboJake]

When braking on ice, you cant even touch the pedal without the ABS pulsing and kicking in.

Then the system may be overly aggressive. Not the greatest, but still not a bad thing. They only activate when the processing unit gets a signal of varying rotational speeds, even on our E30's. So the fact that it is kicking in, means somewhere, one corner is getting more clamping force than the rest, and is regulating it.

You may prefer not having aids, but that doesn't equal to a useless thing. ABS is the only thing I prefer to be regulated. While I, and probably most on here, can easily go without (Shit, drove this car 3 years without it before looking at the relay, and none of my others had ABS), it does come in handy from time to time, mainly because I'm human, and cannot predict that there is an ice patch in that spot on that half of the road, under the snow.