Re: Cavalier ABS light on when not parked on level ground

"bulent" wrote

My brother's 98 Cavalier does this strange thing when he parks the car > on inclined ground - the abs light comes on, and abs is not > operational. but when he moves the car to level ground, turns off the > engine, turns it back on, the light goes off and abs is operational > again. Usually this happens when the car is parked inclined > horizontally, meaning the is parked across the slope. the brake fluid > is all good and level is high, he had a recent brake job but the tech > could not understand why it is doing this. Any ideas?

Well, the very first thing that needs to be done is to pull out the ABS code that will be stored in history. If the light comes on, even if it goes out again, the code will be stored in history. If it happens to be a front wheel speed sensor signal open/excessive variation..etc...(very common on these cars) then I'd be looking at the wiring to the front sensors. Often, one of the wires going into the connector that plugs into the sensor gets broken. You can give the wires a bit of a tug and see if one of the wires comes right out of the connector. We repair these vehicles for this particular problem on a "daily" basis. You can either get the wiring harness and splice a new harness in...or if your tech has the proper tools and equipment, you can simply repair the end of the wire and connector. For some strange reason, GM has chosen to price 2 ft of wire and the connector at an outrageous price....so you might want to just have the wire break repaired.

Again, that's "if" this is the problem. We can't tell you anything for sure unless you retrieve the ABS codes. (even then, you can't tell for sure....proper diagnosis has to be performed)

Ian