ABS Kicking in when not in a slide

Sorry if this is a repeat post. I used the search function and could not get anywhere.

I have a 97 Explorer, 4 door , 4WD. The ABS system kicks in and I get the grind from it when Im pulling up to a stop light, stop sign or pretty much any road conditions. It's not a 100% of the time thing, but it is fairly often. I've been told by a 'friend' that this is nothing to worry about, it's just irritating and may/may not go away on its own. Thing is, this 'friend' is also the person who sold me the vehicle so he has a little stake in feeding me BS to keep me happy.

My question is, is this 'nothing to worry about' as he put it?

Welcome to the forum!

It is something to worry about in the sense that the system is not working the way it was designed, therefore something is wrong. Chances are pretty good the problem is just due to the inexpensive and easy to replace rear wheel speed sensor (surprised a search didn't yield this information) but could also be more atypical or serious such as a cracked tone ring or other sensor issue.

One way to get better fidelity would be to access the ABS system with a scan tool that can pull pending codes from the ABS system. The standard commercial scan tool will not have these capabilities.

-Rod