I bought this now 13 year old car just over four years and almost 70,000 ago when it had just under 15,000 miles on it. Save for the time just after I first got it when the original battery went bad it's been rock solid reliable. Aside from normal wear and tear items like brakes and tires I've had no complaints with this car.
Just like any long term relationship though, there have been a couple of chuck holes. For instance, there was the very strange windshield wiper fiasco and these TRAC OFF, ((ABS)) and SERVICE TRACTION SYSTEM NOW idiot or "warning" lights that began coming on intermittently about 18 months ago. The check engine light, as is often the case, has since stopped coming on. It was not related to what I refer to as the "ABS issue". These lights blinking in my face were followed by a moaning and groaning indicating that the ABS and Traction control systems, which are actually different applications of the same system, struggling to work before finally and gallantly giving me a "no mas" before succumbing to an electronic coma. Early this past spring these lights started coming on every time I started the car without even a shudder or whimper from the system telling me that whatever was going wrong had finally and completely gone wrong. That was fine during the spring and summer months, well not really since I had no ABS, but here in Northeast Ohio come winter time, something had to be done.
Time to do some research. I put my car, a 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS and the "TRAC OFF" and "ABS" into Google and sure enough, tons of info on the problem popped up. Now, if you frequent car blogs and Internet "chat rooms" you probably know to take most if not all of what you read there with a grain of road salt.
The first thing I did that was recommended by one of those forums was take my car to a local auto parts store for a free scan of my car to get the codes that would tell me what was wrong. Through my research I had demised that the issue was either the ABS wiring harness or the massive wheel hub/speed sensor/ABS Traction sensor but I didn't know which side of the car was bad. Heck, both sides could be bad. Let's get scanned.
The guy at the auto parts store was really nice but understand that those guys are not mechanics. No sooner did he get error codes on his scanner indicating that there was a problem that he told me that it was up to me to research what the codes meant. Thanks, pal. With error codes in hand, I couldn't find any definitive correlation as to what the codes meant. It could be this, it could that.
Stumped, I splurged and had a local chain service center run their diagnostic scan on it knowing that for just $50 they'd tell me exactly what was wrong. Sure enough, they found there was an "open loop" in the passenger side ABS system but there was no way to determine if it was the harness or the hub. I thanked them for their diagnostic and was on my way towards getting at this. Money well spent if I may say so myself.
There's a rule in auto repair that you start with the simplest and least expensive thing first and work your way up in expense and complexity from there. Having bought both the ABS harness and the hub at NAPA, $40 for the harness and $90 for the hub and not wanting to pull the hub off, it holds the wheel to the car---it's behind the rotor and oh my god what a job that would be, I held my breath that the issue was going to be "just the harness".
I've never liked getting under my car and even feel spooked walking under a car that's on a lift but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. With my car on jack stands and the left wheel chucked with a 4X4, I dragged myself under here divorcing myself psychologically from what "could happen". Honestly, replacing the harness was actually very straight forward; I've done house wiring projects that were infinitely more complicated than splicing the two wires of the harness into the cluster of wires the old harness came out of. The narrow confines of "under here" and the unforgiving hardness of my bone cold garage floor the only real obstacles. Oh, that and the spectre of instant death if the car fell on me but I digress.
My aching back and numb finger tips suddenly warming up when I went to start the car and for the first time in probably six months, I didn't have the TRAC OFF, ((ABS)) and SERVICE TRACTION SYSTEM NOW lights yelling at me. Net savings, around $100 after I return the hub to NAPA that I thankfully, don't need. At least not right now.
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