I have a 96 3.2TL. Had the front brake and rotors replaced a month ago. The past week I've been hearing the ABS come on (and feeling the pulsing from the brake pedal) everytime I come to a complete stop. The ABS warning light does not come on when this happens. Any ideas what could be the cause?

 

Does the ABS light ever come on? If yes, you need to get DTC (Diagnostic codes) read. That should tell you where the issue lies....

Let me know if the light come on and and I can elaborate.

 

Thanks for the reply. The didn't come on the frist couple of times I get the pulsing. But it did come on once and no more pulsing. I took the car to my mechanic and he noticed that the left rear brake rotor looked pretty nasty. It may have been the problem and I needed to replace them anyway... So we put new rotors and pads on. No more pulsing, but the brake pedal drops a bit when I brake now. I'm thinking it may be a caliper or balance problem. I'm going to drive it for a bit and see if the problem fixes itself (fingers crossed), but if not, then I think I'll have to replace the caliper on that left rear wheel.

Any other suggestions?

 

Argghh. Now I get the ABS light coming on every other time I start the car. Whenever I don't have the light on, I get the same pulsing and whining noise when I come to a complete stop.

Hey it's been ten years and the car has served me extremely well until now. Maybe it's time for a new gen TL?

 

iono if its the same deal but when my break pedal drops to the floor it was the master cylinder i think.. happen on a hill, no good... had to use the e-break all the way home

 

It might be a simple thing like a dirty or blown speed sensor. Please read the following link - https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128649
I had the same problem with my car. I was able to extract the codes -> which told me which sensor was blown->and have that one replaced.

TexasHonda (a very learned and helpful memeber here) laid out the process to extract the codes. The codes are stored when your ABS light comes on. The codes will reveal what the problem is.....

DISCLAIMER
The method mentioned in the thread I refer to above was for a 97 Acura 3.2 TL. I assume it will work for a 96 3.2 TL but I am not sure. PM Texas and he might be able to help.

The easiest thing might be to go to an Acura dealer and have them read the codes. They might charge abt $50 to read the codes and tell you what the issue is.

Hope that helps...

 

I'll work up the courage to try it and see. I'll tell you what the codes are once I've got them.

Thanks for getting me this far!

 

Hmmm... I tried to use a paper clip to bridge the connection on that blue plastic housing that has two wires going into it. When I switched the ignition over to the on position I didn't get any ABS light flashing. I noticed however, that there is another plastic housing (this one is orange-brown) with a bunch of wires and 6 holes next to the blue one. This one has a tag on it that say ABS 50 on it...
Think I'll take it to the dealer sometime this week and get them to pull the code for me.

 

On 2.5TL, it's over against the outside body wall behind a trim piece. I couldn't find the wire codes. If it was blue, 2-wires and no connections, you probably found the service check connector. Note, ABS usually resets everytime you turn key OFF. So if you try to catch codes, you must wait till the ABS light comes on and check for codes w/o turning the keyswitch to OFF.

Codes are long flash for 10's digit and short flash for units digit. There may be multiple codes separated by 3.5 secs.

Note, an OBD2 diagnostic unit will not detect ABS codes. It takes a special Honda ABS diagnostic tool.

good luck

 

Yeah - the blue one is correct. Make sure you turn the key all the way to 'off' position , connect ur paper clip and then switch it to the 'On' position. In my experience the codes are stored even if the light is not on at that moment.

The connection looks like this:

____
|_|_|
|_|_|

So there are actually two slots where you can stick in the paper clips(into two side by side slots). Try both of them if one doesn't work. I sometimes stuck into the wrong slots and that doesn't short the system and hence no codes.

Hope that helps....I'll try and get a pic for you sometime today.

 

Thanks for all the help. I tried and tried to pull the code but ended up with nothing. I found a blue housing with two holes and an orange-brown housing with six holes and tried bridging every possible combo, but got nothing. So I took it to my dealership and had them read it for me. Costs $95 canadian for the diagnostic! But, now I know that it is a rear right ABS sensor malfunction. So, I'm taking it to my mechanic who is cheaper labour so it should cost less than the $405 quote from Acura. Acura said that I should replace the whole sensor, but I think I saw here that a cleaning may do the trick... Is this a good option, or is it better to just replace the part? Keep in mind this is a 1996 3.2TL with about 150,000 km (don't know the mile to Km conversion) on it.

Thanks, this forum is great. I'm going to try replacing my D4 light like I saw in one of the threads. I think that should be easier for me to handle

 

There is a good chance that cleaning the sensor and the sensor rotor cogs will fix the signal loss. I had this experience on a BMW, and had no further problems after cleaning the sensor and rotor cogs.

good luck