Misfire and anti-skid message

[2.4TSE]

Symptoms:

• Occasional hesitation on accelerating out of left hand junctions in to a side road, taken rolling in second gear; cut-bup-bup-bup-go. Other than this, absolutely normal performance - including full beans all the way through third gear when called on
• ABS pump occasionally felt pulsing through the brake pedal when slowing the last half a mile an hour to standstill during gentle braking on bone dry tarmac
• Anti Skid System Service Required activated once after a long, long, long sweeping left hand curve taken at speed; reset by pressing and holding the DSTC button once to deactivate and again to activate
• No stored codes that my generic Chinese reader can see

My guesses (In order of likelhood):

1. Loose driveshaft bolt (new driveshaft fitted a few months ago)
2. Corroded ABS reluctor rings (original items at 16 years old and 180k miles)
3. Worn steering column sensor (original item)

Yours, before I start digging?

[b1mcp]

My guess is same as your 1 and 2. But possibly reverse order.

[sreviz]

Loose abs pump pump connectors may be.

[petey]

I suspect it’s not a misfire, it’s the traction control fighting what it thinks is a slipping wheel due to a duff signal coming from a failed front abs ring or sensor.

You can guess, you can wander around the car with a bag of spammers but I would plug it into VIDA and know for sure. Get all four wheel speeds on one screen and compare traces driving for 20m.

(You might find that cruise control results in a slight variation and tiny judder, almost imperceptible to all but the driver)

[2.4TSE]

Thanks, Guys - and yes petey, I think the same as you.

Your post has reminded me of something else though; cruise control won't engage (the word "Cruise" comes on, but that's all), this perhaps also pointing to reluctor rings (so item 2 then 1 as thought by b1mcp).

Since the rings are easy to check, I will start here before paying for a VIDA session.

Cheers.

[petey]

Originally Posted by 2.4TSE

Since the rings are easy to check, I will start here before paying for a VIDA session.

Cheers.

The car appears to take an aggregate of the four speed signals and call that road speed and that’s why I think my CC was a little unstable. When I checked on VIDA, all wheels had the same speed, but there was a lot of noise on the OSF.
As for rings being easy to check, I had a good look at mine, and they all just looked crappy and rusty. There was no visual difference between the fronts, but the OS gave the bad signal so I changed the sensor and it improved but wasn’t good. I’ve assumed that the damaged ring damaged the sensor, but I only had the confidence to persist on that corner with ever more expensive work (this was just before Christmas on the day before son’s birthday in the snow....) because I knew absolutely that I was working in the correct area. I cannot stress enough that knowing which corner to look at is always worth the effort.

Since changing the OSF, I’ve done a further 30k miles with no other problems.

[2.4TSE]

Thanks again, petey.

I'll post back in a couple of weeks' time; the car is going to spend the interim parked at Heathrow as I now need to go abroad to work.

[2.4TSE]

The cause was the offside front reluctor ring having rusted, expanded, cracked and worn away the front face of the sensor. The nearside was in near-new condition thanks to a new driveshaft (with ring fitted) last year.

Thank you for the contributions to this thread.