the head unit says "Bosch, Made in Germany."

The car had no symptoms other than the ABS light was on, and that the anti-lock function did not work. I tested this by making an extremely hard stop one night from 70 mph on dry pavement and confirmed that I could indeed make the wheels lock, (which was hard to do with my sticky tires). Personally I've never really cared about ABS. I'm pretty darn good at breaking at maximum without locking the wheels -- probably growing up in snow country helped me build these skills. I just fixed it 'cause it was annoying me that it was broken.

I remember a post a while back where someone wished they could turn the ABS feature on and off. Adding a switch before pin 1 would allow for this; also this would turn the on the dash ABS light to remind the driver that the system was turned off.

Oh, symptoms leading to complete failure:

1. the first time it happened, i was sitting idling for about 15 minutes and the light just came on. Restarting the car again did not turn the light off.

2. the next day the light was off and stayed off for a few days.

3. then, every few days or so it might come back on again, and sometimes go out while i was driving.

4. eventually, it would just stay on, and once in a rare while go out again.

5. hitting bumps did not seem to affect the behavior. whether the light was off or on seemed completely random.


Also, I'm looking at the innards of the relay right now. The overvoltage circuit is for some reason relying on lots of thick aluminum surrounding the contacts and the wire windings and the circuit board, so there's just no way to get to anything to attempt repair, even if one manages to get the cover off without damaging anything.