Please don't ignore this
 

Before I get flamed for posting this in this section let me explain myself. I have been have very bad problems with my car. I have over 180 views and no repies. I need some information bad, and it seems like no one is knowlegeable enough to help me in the section I origionally posted in. I figured that this is where the most knowlegeable people on this site like to post. Here's the link. www.ls1tech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=948102

how many miles are on it?

98,000 mi. almost all highway. car went on gm power tour for several years and was also used as a daily driver. The previous owner drove it back and forth to work occasionally as well.

i will talk to my bud that works at our local gm dealership ive known him a while. ill prob see him 2 night ill get back wit you later

thanks alot man!! I'm at work till 7am so i'll be at the computer.

You might have a bad abs sensor, or sensor connection. Make sure these are ok, and not shorted to ground. If this doesnt help, I would take a close look at your master cylinder.

How do I tell which wheel speed sensor it is? How would I tell if it is my master cylinder? Would that sensor make the brakes not hold if it malfunctions?

I'd agree with the wheel speed sensor or related component.


You have 3 channel or 4 channel ?

Channel?

Do you have TCS or no?
TCS car = 4 channel
NO TCS = 3 channel

Mine's going to be a 3 channel then.

i could be mistaken but if it were merely a sensor wouldnt the modulator be going crazy? thought abs was disabled when there was a fault in the system anyway. i would think if he is really dragging brakes you could smell it and it would most likely be in the hydraulics. just thinkin out loud more than anything though

Actually, thinking back on it I could smell something burning. Smelled kind of strange. I didn't think to much about it because I stopped smelling it relatively quickly. When I got the car back to the house I couldn't smell it anymore.

if you can turn a wrench, the brakes are fairly easy. Having 98k miles on the car I would guess you need a new calipers. From your story it sounded like you had a caliper stick, which for 98k miles if the brake calipers were never serviced is common. I would start by pulling each wheel and servicing each caliper. The calipers come apart very easy, i'll bet the slide pins are bone dry and rusty if not siezed. my 02 ss has 40k miles on it and i did the brakes last year and all slide pins were poorly lubed and I never brake hard. And with the calipers off pop each piston and check for rust and sediment inside. Reman calipers are $20 or $40 from a parts store.
I don't know what conditions exactly will set the ABS inop light but holding the brakes down and powering the rear wheels through for an amount of time wouldn't surprise me. Usually if any sort of code is set and the Check gages light is on (or abs inop light maybe?) the computer will reset itself on that set code if the engine goes through 3 complete warm-up shutdown cycles without seeing that code happen again. I have the 2002 gm service manual and if i can remember i'll look up the abs diagnostics.
only other thing I can think of is garbage on one of the wheel sensors, or the abs modulator is bad, and I believe all those can be scanned. I'm pretty sure reading about a specific computer diagnostic in the service manual that the dealer can do on the abs modulator. as long as that's not fubar ($$$) anything else should hopefully be cheap and easier to fix.

looking in service manual, a DTC will set for C0036, C0041 or C0051 if all of the following exist for 10ms:
- suspect wheel speed = 0 (front wheels ?)
- the other wheel speeds are greater than 25mph for 0.01 seconds
- the suspect wheel = 0 during drive off and other wheels are greater than 7.5mph
- a short to ground- wheel speed sensor signal is shorted to ground
- deviation of two wheel speeds at either side of the vehicle greater than 4 mph, or at front axle greather than 6mph for time period of 10-20 seconds.

it goes on to say the ebcm automatically clears the history dtc when a current dtc is not detected in 100 consecutive drive cycles, I'm not sure how to interpret this if it means it's 100 drive cycles before it turns the abs inop light off and reactives the abs or if it stores the dtc in memory for 100 cycles.
there's many other DTC's listed, if after 3 or 5 days of complete warmup cycles the light doesn't go out by itself then you'll need to get the code read to figure out what's causing it.

Thankyou very much 1 FMF. I really appreciate the imput. I have been so busy with work I haven't been able to jack with it. I appreciate the time you spent to look it all up for me. If there's ever anything I can do to help you out sometime just let me know!!

I was going to say that it sounds like a stuck caliper/ possibly a leaky brake hose.. bad piston in the caliper just something isn't releasing. I don't think it would be the ABS unit because even if the ABS unit is bad I don't believe it would change your pedal "feel."