ABS System ‘clicking’

[Matthew]

My ’94 Accord ABS system is ‘clicking’ and its draining the power from my electrical system. I think my battery is dying, but I’ve been doing some other work on the car and haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet – so I can jumpstart the car and have it run for a while with all systems go, but then after about five minutes the ABS system presents a problem:

Every second or so the system ‘clicks’. These clicks alternate, first the modulator unit (driver side) will click and I can see a bit of fluid squirt around in the reservoir, then the motor relay (passenger side) clicks. These two just alternate clicking. The car still runs, but there is an obvious increased load on the system.

My thoughts are:
– bad battery, though I wasn’t sure how this could affect the ABS system once the engine is running
– bad alternator
– my negative battery cable is corroded and needs to be replaced also, so, maybe a bad system grounding.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Topic

[college man]

I think the best thing to do is Load test the battery and alternator
either yourself or from an auto part store for free. Clean up your cables/
replace to get your charging system working 100%. Then see if the abs problem
goes away. Abs light on? You may want to see if any codes are stored. more in
these links.

http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/solving-automotive-electrical-problems

http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/solving-automotive-performance-issues

[Matthew]

Just so that I can judge my intuition: would the fact that the car is able to start but suffers under the ABS problem load indicate alternator issues, or could bad battery connections cause a problem?

My ABS light is on, but it has been on for the past 20K miles or so with no presenting symptoms. I’ll see about pulling the codes though to shed some light on the situation.

[Author]

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