need help...very odd problem...

Blue89SC

Registered User
well a few days ago I turned my car off and still heard some kind of buzzing from under the hood... well i open the hood and from what i can see it seems like the ABS motor is running or something....not really sure why it would stay on after the car is off???? Now when i drive the car the brake light and the ABS lights both come on periodically and when i shut the car off what seems to be the ABS motor continues running. Anyone have any idea what is going on??? I need to get this fixed becaause it keeps killing my battery...the buzzing is coming from the drivers side closest to the firewall...HELPPPPP


btw.. does anyone know how tounplug power to the ABS motor so i could just unplug it til i figure out how or what to fix
 
you don't want to unplug it or you won't have power brakes. If the pump is always running you could have a bad accumulator. this could also burn up your pump motor if you let it go too long. when you first start your car in the morning those 2 lights should go out in no longer than 20-30 seconds.
 
ya the brake and ABS lights are randomly coming on and going off while im driving...so a bad accumulator would cause the pump to run when the ignition on the car is off?
 
I don't recall if mine did that or not when my accumulator was bad. I have learned though that it could be the ignition switch too. is yours hard to turn or anything? do any other accessories run after you shut it off? i used to be able to hear my ABS motor running while i was driving around and it would come on frequently. that all stopped when i replaced the accumulator.
 
I had that problem when I first got my SC with 101,000 miles on it. Everything was fine until one day after work when I got in the car I heard a hum from under the hood...the car was still turned off as I had not tried to start it yet. I was baffled so I popped the hood and listened while movong around the egine bay. Turned out the ABS hydraulic pump motor was running on its own with the car turned off. I guess it had been doing so since I returned from lunch about 4 hours earlier. The pump motor was extremely hot too! Turns out it was the ABS Pump Motor relay. The contacts in it were stuck closed. I replaced it with a GP Sorenson relay from Advance Auto that I picked up for around $14 or so and all was well. The motors have a thermal overload switch in them so they won't run to the point of burning up but it isn't good for them to run that long. They are DC motors with brushes and can go bad in this type of situation. I took the relay apart and sure enough, the contacts were fused closed. This is what caused my problem.

About 1 week later, I also had to replace the accumulator ball as well because of the higher than normal pressures it was exposed to for several hours of continuous pump running.

Replace your ABS relay immediately! $14 is a cheap price to pay instead of the several hundred another ABS motor & pump will cost you.
 
thanks alot man... i will be getting a new relay tomorrow... the pump should be ok i havent been driving it since it has been doing this
 
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