ABS light came on, battery dead.... wha??

[Nevin]

So last night I'm leaving a buddies house and the ABS light comes on. Ok, no abs, "we'll deal with that later," I think to myself. Get out of the car at home and I hear the ABS motor running under the hood. I thought that was kind of odd, but I guess I just figured it would turn off?? Guess I was wrong...

So I go to leave for work this morning and the car is dead. Dang! Tried to jump it and and it just didn't work at all and as soon as we hooked up the cables, the ABS motor started running again.

Anyways, so I just got a ride to work with a buddy and the car is sitting out front now. So, any helpful ideas would be great. Is it like a bad sensor that is just telling the motor to keep running??

Well, any advice you have would be much appreciated. As always, thank you.

-nevin

[SVXRide]

Yank the ABS fuse and recharge the battery?
-Bill

[Nevin]

Well, I can't for the life of me figure out which fuse or relay is the one that runs the sucker. I pulled every single one of them one at a time this morning when we tried to jump it but nothing seemed to work....Unless it's inside, I didn't try any in there.

I'm on my way back to work now though. I'm going to just go and unplug the module and just try jumping the car again after work. Then hopefully if I have some time in the next couple of days I can get into our shop and take a peek at it!


Thanks for the quick reply, by the way. I only posted this like 7 minutes ago!

[Hocrest]

The relay in the ABS pump can tend to "stick" and drain the battery. Someone just posted about this the other day, search for "abs relay" you should get something...

[Jvan]

Had this problem several years ago on my 94. The relay is stuck. All you need to do is tap on the top of the ABS motor and it should unstick. I believe this was a problem on the early 92/93 models which was suppose to have been fixed by 94. In my case this happened several times over a couple of months and then the problem disapperared. I bought another ABS motor on ebay to switch them but as I said the problem cured itself. You can buy the relay from Subaru ( don't remember the stock #) but tapping the relay will unstick it. Then you can charge the battery.

[Nevin]

So is the ABS relay in that plastic thing that says ABS right above the motor? Is there such a thing as an updated relay that doesn't have this problem?

Thanks for the tips everyone, this is great!

*searched*

Ok, So I should plug everything back in and whack the motor with a hammer. That's what I'm going to do as soon as it stops snowing...Which could be never, as far as THIS winter has gone.


Thanks again, and sorry to ask such bothersome newbie questions!

[Jvan]

Don't hit it with a hammer!! It just needs to be lightly tapped with the handle of a screw driver or something light.

[Nevin]

Originally Posted by Jvan

Don't hit it with a hammer!! It just needs to be lightly tapped with the handle of a screw driver or something light.

Well... yeah. I'm not going to just go wail on it. This won't be the first electric motor I've helped this way.