Leisure-Drive: ABS Snow

Once in our driving time we must have come across uncontrollable skidding some where and the worst scenario could arise with slippery road and innocent looking power pole. Picture a scenario when you are driving fast and suddenly there is a need to slam the brake, and by the way the ABS was still on the drawing board.

Suddenly instead of slowing down the car is heading directly toward the object we are supposedly to avoid, instead the worst thing is occurring; we are loosing the car control without any sign of slowing down!

It was just right after the dawn in light drizzle when I lost the control heading into a pole on a white 1974 Opel Rekord D 1900, but luckily just a good 2 meter away from the pole my right foot instinctively step off the brake pedal, and immediately the car could regain control.

ABS Snow, the situation may also hamper car control in snowing condition but nothing could beat the dangerous Icy Black on a frosty morning as it may caught driver’s unawareness. The ABS in a lay man language is simply an on and off brake pumping in rapid succession within thousandth of second. However on such snow the ABS is actually increasing the stopping distance due to the lack of traction, the ABS controller works hard to unblock the front tires.

As the result the controller instructs both modulator and ABS pump to brake alternately in rapid successions until the tire blocking process or skidding is gone whereby such process is being monitored by front ABS Wheel Speed Sensor. It does indeed take some driver’s active adjustments to get used to driving ABS equipped car in a snowing environment.

But under normal circumstances the ABS could give a headache when either one of its modules fails to function, it could be speed sensor, modulator, pump or controller failure.

Our 2008 Honda Fit/ Jazz had months of ABS Light Comes On problem, as its warranty has already expired replacing its modulator was on postpone, until the recent 6 point Scale Richter earthquake strike about 200 km away, the problem was completely disappeared. Apparently the few seconds of earth jolting fix the modulator.

On some part of the world Honda is recalling off this model due to ABS failure, it may well be to do with product or design defects, but on most cases it is arisen from faulty; sensor, ABS Relayor electrical glitch. This is mostly true for older ABS equipped car, fortunately there is a number of growing parties producing Remanufactured ABS or even new parts as good as OEM replacements with less cost. Yet technology keeps advancing the ABS is now superseded by ESC….

The Electronic Stability Control components are essentially ABS plus a yaw rate sensor, a lateral acceleration sensor, a steering wheel sensor, and an upgraded integrated control unit. Eventually we are getting more paranoid but ESC could provide secured safe feeling albeit at the cost of technology complexity and headache…as well!

Such system would definitely be worthwhile on high speeding Rally Car in a WRC ‘09 Round 3 Cyprus rally event, certainly it has top of the class Stability Control features dedicated for competition purposes only.