Can you disable the ABS light by removing a fuse or something?

Hi guys,
Id like to remove the abs light from the dash temporarily to get through the MOT. Is it possible to remove a fuse or something?
Cheers

Part of the mot test is to check that the abs light comes on with the ignition and goes off again when it should. Easier and safer just to fix the fault

Yep just get the problem fixed as this is a safety device at fault.

Not possible and definitely not advisable. It's there for a reason mate, solve the problem itself

Totally agreed with Fahad, there for a good reason. Sometimes it can be as simple as a loose connector under the seat. Have you had the fault read?

Some uscruplious people disconnect the light from the ABS circuit and splice it into the oil light or engine managment light circuit , this means when MOT man switches on dash it lights up .. but when he starts the car it switches off .. just like it should do ... But thats unscruplious people who do that .

Thanks guys. Arent you a sensible lot I have a scanner on the way which will take 3 weeks to arrive which will hopefully pinpoint the fault then it'll be an easy fix from there.

Or you could just fix it. When ot comes to safety it's important the car is maintained. You are not only putting yourself at risk but other road users as your car will not have a functioning abs system so will lockup in case of heavy breaking.

For the sake of a few quid I would just have the fault read and repaired.

ToothlessDrunk said:

Some uscruplious people disconnect the light from the ABS circuit and splice it into the oil light or engine managment light circuit , this means when MOT man switches on dash it lights up .. but when he starts the car it switches off .. just like it should do ... But thats unscruplious people who do that .

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I often wonder if anyone might have done this, it would be difficult to detect when buying a 2nd hand car

There have been a few times I have wished ABS would go away as I would have been stopped before it had figured itself out . it should really have a disable button like traction control does . If I can manage to stop from 170mph + on 2 wheels without need for ABS to the point the tyres are squeeking in protest .. then I can sure as my nadgers are hairy haul a car up in smart fashion . Especially in dry conditions and very loose conditions ..Mass produced ABS is really only is better on a smooth road thats wet .. throw anything else at it and it ain't as good as threshold or cadence braking . All ABS has done is remove braking skill from the learning curve of driving it has had very little impact on road safety , there has been no end to people smashing up the arse of other peoples cars or ending up in ditches because we have ABS now . All it has done is up the level of over confidence in a car .. " Ooo I have ABS I can stop for anything so I can go faster " ... but it does not work that well .

If you are waiting for a scanner coming you could try cleaning the wheel sensors or attach a multimeter on resistance to each one and spin the wheel to see if the reading changes

ToothlessDrunk said:

There have been a few times I have wished ABS would go away as I would have been stopped before it had figured itself out . it should really have a disable button like traction control does . If I can manage to stop from 170mph + on 2 wheels without need for ABS to the point the tyres are squeeking in protest .. then I can sure as my nadgers are hairy haul a car up in smart fashion . Especially in dry conditions and very loose conditions ..Mass produced ABS is really only is better on a smooth road thats wet .. throw anything else at it and it ain't as good as threshold or cadence braking . All ABS has done is remove braking skill from the learning curve of driving it has had very little impact on road safety , there has been no end to people smashing up the **** of other peoples cars or ending up in ditches because we have ABS now . All it has done is up the level of over confidence in a car .. " Ooo I have ABS I can stop for anything so I can go faster " ... but it does not work that well .

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I completely agree with all that.

I turn the VSA off nearly all the time and, if I could, I would also turn off the ABS

The ambiguous info in the Owner's Manual scares me to death

freddofrog said:

I completely agree with all that.

I turn the VSA off nearly all the time and, if I could, I would also turn off the ABS

The ambiguous info in the Owner's Manual scares me to death

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Well would you look at that .. seems honda agrees with me too . Also have you ever tried taking a car off road with the traction control switched on !!!! Leave you stuck on a damp lawn it would , my apprentice was trying to get my van off a site the other day .. he got stuck straight away .He walks over " your van won't move it's stuck " .. Told him go back start it up switch off the traction control and try again .. So he did .. and drove out without any problem .

These "aids" to safety all well and good but it will not stop you from hitting the bloke in front who you have been tail gating, nor will lane warnings do much when you are asleep, or vsa if not appreciating the present road conditions, as far as the MOT goes it is only as good as the time you are tested, and these other gizmos can and do pack up before you are off the ramp. Also the page copied above must have "lost" something in translation, cos it is a load of rubbish. All road users shoild be trained on two wheels before thay are let out on four. IMHO.

edgeoftime said:

These "aids" to safety all well and good but it will not stop you from hitting the bloke in front who you have been tail gating, nor will lane warnings do much when you are asleep, or vsa if not appreciating the present road conditions, as far as the MOT goes it is only as good as the time you are tested, and these other gizmos can and do pack up before you are off the ramp. Also the page copied above must have "lost" something in translation, cos it is a load of rubbish. All road users shoild be trained on two wheels before thay are let out on four. IMHO.

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I dunno, idea is good in theory ..... But .... I would hate to think what the average car driver riding a motorcycle would do to my motorcycle insurance premiums .

ToothlessDrunk said:

I dunno, idea is good in theory ..... But .... I would hate to think what the average car driver riding a motorcycle would do to my motorcycle insurance premiums .

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Probably the same we did to the elder gentlemen riders, but in my day most damage could be fixed with a bit of scaffold pipe!!

edgeoftime said:

Probably the same we did to the elder gentlemen riders, but in my day most damage could be fixed with a bit of scaffold pipe!!

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I am elder gentleman rider .. I pay around 120 quid a year fully comp to insure a KTM 990 superduke and a Husky SMR 570R

Whilst i've been riding a push-bike since I was a nipper, if I'd ever made it to a motor-bike, I'd have been dead before I made it to 4 wheels, "red mist" would have seen to that. Learned my road-craft on Dyane's (variant of 2CV), fantastic cornering and sliding in them, especially in snow and mud. Once got stopped by the police for going round a corner too fast in an Ami (another 2CV variant), they said it was leaning over so far that they thought I must be drunk. I told them that the car was so slow that stopping me wouldn't increase my slow journey by very much percentage, which went over their heads LOL

The joys of driving them in the wet ....under-steer, locking wheels and sliding on the brakes, taking off over hump-back bridges, all good fun. Also had a Triumph GT6, lovely tail-happy car, my gf wouldn't get in that car with me driving in the rain LOL
Accord handling is rubbish compared with any of those cars, if those cars never needed VSA and ABS, no idea why an Accord does.

freddofrog said:

Whilst i've been riding a push-bike since I was a nipper, if I'd ever made it to a motor-bike, I'd have been dead before I made it to 4 wheels, "red mist" would have seen to that. Learned my road-craft on Dyane's (variant of 2CV), fantastic cornering and sliding in them, especially in snow and mud. Once got stopped by the police for going round a corner too fast in an Ami (another 2CV variant), they said it was leaning over so far that they thought I must be drunk. I told them that the car was so slow that stopping me wouldn't increase my slow journey by very much percentage, which went over their heads LOL

The joys of driving them in the wet ....under-steer, locking wheels and sliding on the brakes, taking off over hump-back bridges, all good fun. Also had a Triumph GT6, lovely tail-happy car, my gf wouldn't get in that car with me driving in the rain LOL
Accord handling is rubbish compared with any of those cars, if those cars never needed VSA and ABS, no idea why an Accord does.

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In todays traffic you would not get me back on a bike, and the thought of 2 chevuea makes me tremble.

Thanks for the replies fellas. I'll get the multimeter out if I get time. Is it worth removing and replacing each sensor one by one and cleaning or will that cause more faults? I have been offered some used sensors at £10 each not far from me.

Also I have a VSA button on the dash that doesnt seem to do anything, whats this for?

hornyhonda said:

Thanks for the replies fellas. I'll get the multimeter out if I get time. Is it worth removing and replacing each sensor one by one and cleaning or will that cause more faults? I have been offered some used sensors at £10 each not far from me.

Also I have a VSA button on the dash that doesnt seem to do anything, whats this for?

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VSA = Vehicle Stability ***ist, a kind of traction control. Press the button in and the light should turn on indicating that VSA is diabled.

IIRC the VSA and ABS light are the same

Cheers Brian. When I press the VSA button I dont see any lights come up on the dash or on the button itself. Maybe this is linked to why my abs light is on.

I'll scan the pages that follow on from the scan in my post #12.

The ABS indicator light and VSA indicator light are separate, but the owners manual says that "the VSA indicator will come on with the ABS indicator". The indicator lights indicate a problem, I remember reading that an ABS fault will also bring on the VSA fault light (not sure about the other way round).

There is also a warning triangle between the two indicator lights, this should come on when you press the VSA button in.

So, if you have the ABS fault indicator lit, then the VSA fault indicator should also be lit. If not, then something very weird going on. As for the warning triangle, if there is an ABS fault (and so a VSA fault light too), I've no idea if that will light up when you press in the VSA button.

I'll scan the pages .....

here are the pages (314 to 317 in my owners manual)
314 & 315 about ABS
316 & 317 about VSA

click on an image to make it full size

There's a road in Newhaven which is on an incline and is surfaced with those concrete sections rather than tarmac. It's residential but fairly busy as it's a bit of a rat-run, and one side has parked cars down it constantly. at the bottom it goes round a blind bend and there is also another road which T's off from the inside of the bend. Needless to say quite often you have to slam on the brakes going down that hill when someone comes round the corner too fast/pulls out the junction without looking... not a problem in the dry, but from having driven all of my cars along this stretch in the wet at some point or another I can say that every car equipped with ABS I've driven down that hill has come unstuck in the wet - even my '13 Jazz struggled to stop in the wet on that slope as fast as my non-ABS Golf could. My 3rd gen Accord can barely stop on that hill in the wet, it's like you're on sheet ice and I've nearly shat myself a good few times in that car :lol: Newer cars are better than that but you still get that feeling that the brakes aren't giving you the braking force you're requesting which makes judging your stopping distance much harder. The Prelude/Golf/Scirocco would all skid of course if you slammed the anchors on, but if you weren't retarded with the brakes then you could definitely stop them much quicker than an ABS equipped car.

Plus, with ABS you can't properly lock up the brakes if you want to make a dramatic entrance :lol: the noise the Bighorn makes when you stand on the brake pedal is amazing

You do have to wonder if all these driver aids are a good thing as does it not encourage a lack of driving skill if cars do everything for the driver? Even more alarming are things such as lane keep ***ist - if you can't keep your car in its lane then why are you on the road?!? You're either too drunk, tired or stupid to be behind the wheel if you need your car to tell you that you're drifting across the road completely unaware.

My chinese HDS thingy arrived a few days ago. I plugged it in and it came up with no codes shown although the ABS light is still on. Can I try clearing the light/code by disconnecting the battery?

If not can anyone whos familiar with the HDS tell me if im doing something wrong?

My MOT is on the 6th Feb so im desperately trying to get this fault ironed out and to make things worse my mrs is expecting our first child in March. Im half tempted to sell the car and buy an older honda or try my luck at a while you wait MOT centre and hope they forget to check the dash.

Thanks for your help so far

I'll be getting my HDS back in a few days, I'll check it out on my car over the weekend

I took it to a garage today where they used a scanner on it. They tried with the snap on one but in the end went with the bosch scanner I think. It came up with rear right wheel sensor and abs pump module failure which I was dreading as thats the expensive bit. He said the wheel sensor being faulty can sometime cause the abs pump to spike but its rare and it seems to point towards the pump being at fault. So now I need a new abs pump which will need programming by honda and will end up costing me as much as I paid for the car. I may try changing the abs sensor for a used one off ebay ive been offered for a tenner but it might be easier to sell or break the car for parts. Has anyone else been through this problem? Did it end up being quite costly?

Thanks

ouch

No, the control module can be repaired for (IIRC) £199 by BBA Reman (there is another company who do this as well) and then set up with your HDS. Best if you have a search for some recent threads on the problem before getting too worried!

Do you know the actual codes that were read... was a 66-1 mentioned?

But, if you do break the car, first dibs on the drivers front fog light surround!