Filed under: Cars — at 9:47 am by jim

I got my BMW back last night from Wolfgang’s.  Price-wise, the repair was pretty reasonable… I paid $280 to have two wheel speed sensors replaced.  The sensors themselves cost about $90 apiece… plus another $80 in labor… plus tax.

As I was told, there were actually three ABS error codes being thrown.  One was for my front-left speed sensor, and one was for my front-right speed sensor.  However, the third was for a power failure in the solenoid of something… I had no idea what this error code was about.  My mechanic said that it was possible that the two faulty sensors were throwing off my ABS module, so that’s why it was throwing this extra code.  So he didn’t replace anything else, but said it’s possible the ABS light would come on again.

So I got in the car, turned it on, and… SUCCESS!  No ABS light.  However, when I was only a few miles from my condo, trouble struck again.  The ABS light came on again, like my mechanic had said would possibly happen.  Apparently there’s another issue with the ABS system still.

This means that I’ll have to bring the car into the shop again at some point.  That’s not too bad, because I was planning to bring it in next month to replace some suspension components.

What’s really rough though is that I have an autocross event tomorrow night… if I drive without the ABS, I’ll risk flat-spotting my tires if I lock up my brakes during a hard stop.  One option is to only drive at about 80%, making sure to slow down very early for each of the turns.  I wouldn’t get a good lap time then, but at least I’d be able to compete.  It’s really tempting, since this is the first night event to be hosted by the Atlanta Region SCCA.