Trying to help out a family member with his 98 Lincoln Town Car. His traction control/brakes activates at highway speeds very randomly and seems to happen more often while driving through a curve. Guys, I have no idea other than a misaligned/dirty ABS ring/sensor which he has already checked. He has also checked voltage at each sensor and there is voltage present. Any ideas?

 

^ just because there's voltage(input) doesn't mean the ECU is interpreting it correctly from the ABS Module(output). I'd start with the ABS module which is most likely the cause.

 

Makes sense - the system operates by watching relative voltages on the wheel sensors. If it sees a differential in voltage beyond a certain threshold, it'll activate traction control. It could be as Ghetto is saying - if the sensors are OK but the module interprets the voltages wrong, or feeds the wrong info to the ECU, it'll trip the TC into action.

At the same time, it could be the sensor(s) anyhow. Just because they have voltage doesn't mean it's the correct voltage. The only way he could really measure the voltage would be at rest and that doesn't really tell him anything about what they read while the car is in motion. He needs to find out whether the car can be scanned for codes other than actual engine fail codes. If it's like Audi, and there are chassis-related fail codes that can be stored and accessed, it should tell him more about which sensor is causing the failure (whether or not it's that sensor or the part of the module that reads that sensor, who know?).

 

The sensors show linear voltage increases as the wheels are spun. No faults. It's extremely random and there is no method or trick to get the TC to activate. Thanks for the help. I told him to sell it and get an Audi/vw

 

^ Were the voltages the same for all 4 sensors?