1998 Olds Silhouette, brakes,TSC, and ABS

[Laurie1121]

Lately my van has had the traction, brake, and anti lock brake light on as soon as I step on the brake. My air bag light has always been on no matter what. We took it to a garage and they said it's the traction motor? and it runs about $700-1200 to fix. Does this sound right? Has anyone else had this problem? He said if we don't fix it, he can disconnect it and the lights will not come on, but the brakes will still work fine. Any suggestions? We only plan to have this another year, so we don't want to fork out so much money. He also found a coolant leak and something to do w/ our breaks that will cost about $1,100. We always thought this has been a great van, no problems ever, then all of a sudden lots of dollars!! Hope someone has had this problem.

[94 Jimmy]

Same thing happened to me. While driving down the freeway I noticed a rattling sound from the front of the van. My wife told me that she had a Low Traction light earlier in the day, so on a hunch I turned off the TSC, rattle gone.
When we got home I checked the front wheels and found that the mechanic while doing some work on our transmission had failed to secure the brake line and wheel speed sensor wire. The wheel had slowly ground its way through the insulation of the wheel sensor essentially telling the ABS/TSC computer that the right front wheel was losing traction. The computer being the good little servent that it is tried to correct the situation by releasing the other brakes intermittently.
The fix was to cut back the insulation on the defective wire, use a butt splice to reconnect the ends of the wires, cover the splice with a conformal coating (I use liquid electrical tape), rehang the line and cable properly,and get a new mechanic.
Check the brake lines where they run from the engine compartment to the A frame and down to the wheels for damage. Look at the plugs for these cables, their some what hidden but can be found. Look for any insulation damage or loose connections. We had the same problem when we ran over a bag of garbage on the freeway and knocked the right rear speed sensor plug loose.
Good luck, let us know what you find.
See ya
94

[GregA]

Originally Posted by Laurie1121

... My air bag light has always been on no matter what. We took it to a garage and they said it's the traction motor? and it runs about $700-1200 to fix. Does this sound right? Has anyone else had this problem? He said if we don't fix it, he can disconnect it and the lights will not come on, but the brakes will still work fine. Any suggestions? We only plan to have this another year, so we don't want to fork out so much money. He also found a coolant leak and something to do w/ our breaks that will cost about $1,100. We always thought this has been a great van, no problems ever, then all of a sudden lots of dollars!! Hope someone has had this problem.

About the Air Bag Light - When I remove the fuse for the Air Bag system (to work on the van), my light will also stay on. You might want to locate and check the fuse for the system.

Traction "Motor"? What's that?

Let us know what happens.

Take Care,

[94 Jimmy]

As I remember a traction motor is a locomotive or the electric motor for it. Perhaps the mechanic was talking about the traction control portion of the ABS Control Unit, Rockauto.com has them for around $200. Perhaps he was blowing smoke to run up the bill, check the sensor plugs like I suggested.
We had problems with the Air Bags in our van(again after we had a mechanic work on it) and I found that the plugs under the front seats and near the seat belts had something to do with it. I reseated the plugs and the problem went away, never researched it beyond there.
If your going to work on the air bag circuits though, check the service manual(well worth the $20 for a Haynes manual) and see the precautions, you don't want any $2-3000 accidents with a deployed air bag.
See ya
94

[am1971]

I agree with 94 Jimmy. I would inspect the wires going into the back of the wheel spindles. I had the same problem with my van. Every time I would start it and put my foot on the brake and put it in drive, the ABS would start to rattle and then I would get an ABS light and the system would shut off. If I just turned the system off before this happened, it was fine. After a while it quit completly and the ABS light remained on. I went under the vehicle and found that the wires to the driver and passenger spindles were broken. These wires are a pair and enter the back of the wheel spindle. They send pulses to the ABS computer and these pulses tell the ABS computer how fast the wheel is spinning in relation to the other 3 wheels to make the needed corrections by automatically activating the ABS pump and pulsing your brakes to keep the car from sliding sideways, (hence the ABS system). If this is the problem and you can see the broken wires, you can save yourself about $400 in parts by just soldering the connections back together (because the dealership won't do this they will only replace them). I did this and the problem was solved. Hoepfullt this helps.