Well, today I decided that it was time to bleed the brakes again, I had it done last year at a shop. The truck is a 97 f-150, 2wd, 5 speed with approx 200,000km on it. I belive it is a rear abs only setup.

We did all 4 wheels and everything went smoothly. Being scared of air in the abs unit we made sure that the fluid level was never below 1/2 of the resivor.

At the same time, we also pulled the caliper off the front brakes and greased the slides. As for the rear brakes, the drum was taken off, everything was blown clean with compressed air and the adjustor star was tightened up a tad.

Unfortunally to my horror, when I put everything back and started up the truck, the ABS light came on and the parking brake light will not turn off. The brakes seem to work normally (even tho the truck was only driven about 15ft) and the brake lights works fine.


What do you people think the problem could be?

edit: in case it has anything to do with it, I bled the brakes in the following order. Right rear, left rear, right front, left front. I also used standard DOT 3 valvoline brake fluid.

 

The rear ABS is controlled by a sensor in the rear pumpkin. What you have done would not affect it.

Have you cycled your emergency brake and made sure you don't have a link that drags? Try manually pulling the E-brake up and see if that turns off the light.

 

Yes we did try to cycle the e-brake, it didn't help. We also double checked to see if the fluid was topped up.... didn't help.

Anyhow, we let the truck sit for just over an hour (while we changed the engine oil, packed up the equipment). The battery was also disconnected during this period (I was thinking it might "clear" the error code). When we fired the truck back up, all is normal again (YAY!!). I will take it out for a spin tomorrow to confirm that everything works fine but from what I see, all is well

Thanks

 

Cool! Glad everything appears to be working. If your ABS acts up again I would look at the rear sensor, it's easy to replace.