1998 V8 needs ABS Module

[contour svt]

I just bought a 1998 sho got to drive it for about a month then module went bad I am looking for a another one. I don't want to spend 3,000 dollars through Ford. I have already contacted ford about the price because it is ridiculous. This must of been when the cars where brand new and from what I can see this is a common problem. nobody should have to pay 3,000 dollars for a part that the building of it was flawed. Will anyway if you are parting out your car or something let me know Thanks

 

[kerbdogma]

Being inspired by my SHO being worth 180-200 dollars, I'd say I might do this but I am not a mechanic.

 

[stephen newberg]

There is nothing flawed about the ABS module in the Gen III SHO, it is just seriously old. There is a tendency to forget that the newest one of these cars is now about 20 years out of the plant.

But regardless, are you sure it is the module and not the ABS pump? They tend to go more often than the control module. The problem then becomes that there are no ABS pumps for the Gen III anywhere in the pipeline that I can find or have heard of. So, certainly for the pump, and possibly for the control module if you want one for less than you quote, you are going to have to go looking at car scraping yards. Good ones are well organized and you can likely find one there, as there have been a lot of Gen IIIs scrapped due to the cam sprocket flat. If your problem is the module, one from a scrap yard has a reasonable chance of still working. Less so for a pump, as if they have been sitting for a long time, likely they are going to be dead too.

pax, smn

 

[contour svt]

As for your thought on the pump it's perfect. I pulled the module and had 7 of the small thin wires come loose off the tabs that Bosch poorly soldered. So I resoldered the wires carefully then found 2 wires are off on the other end (circuit board side) which are not fixable because of the complexity of getting to that location. So maybe flawed is the wrong word, POS sounds better, my opinion is Ford should at least reduce the price of the module (not pump). This is a Taurus not a Ferrari all the Mustangs I have owned and my Contour SVT you can get parts for these at reasonable prices. My Dad and Uncle worked for Barrett Jackson back in the day and restored every vehicle you could imagine in that era and parts were available. All I want is a new or reman module.

 

[stephen newberg]

The place where it all goes bad though, is in production numbers. There were only about 20k Gen IIIs made and the last one made is nearing 20 years old. With the sprocket problem, the surviving numbers are likely to be very low, so there is simply not a lot of way to cost effectively produce new or reman parts. The parts that are common between the Gen III and that generation of Taurus are easy to get, as I suspect is also true for your Contour SVT in relation to a regular Contour. Maybe even more so as they made a huge lot of Taurus vehicles. But its not going to be the same for the parts that are very low volume for what is basically a short production run car.

pax, smn