Anatomy of an ABS Sensor

Have you ever wondered what was inside an ABS sensor? After an hour of pulling, drifting, wedging, and yes, even torching, I can now tell you. There is a cylindrical magnet inside a coil of lots of very fine copper wire, a backstop, and a whole lot of this gooey gel stuff. It’s all stuffed into an aluminum sheath and fused to a rubber boot thing that gives the tech something to bang on when trying to remove or insert it. I learned all of this on Friday night while trying to remove the failed ABS sensor from my driver’s side front spindle. It took quite an effort – included removing the halfshaft – and I ended up completely destroying the thing in the process. Fortunately, the car gods smiled on me and I got the new one in the car all buttoned up with minimal fuss. And most important, no broken fingernails, thank you pink camo Mechanix gloves! I turned on the ignition to check and was rewarded with no ABS light and no traction control light for the first time in weeks. I’ll take it out for a test drive in the morning. I hear that if the sensor doesn’t pick up the ring signal, all sorts of hell breaks loose. But no idiot lights – yahoooooooo!