My ABS and Parking Brake lights are on and the speedometer doesn't work. The car runs ok but all the lights are disconcerting, I followed another thread with a similar issue but there was no resolution posted. Any help?

 

Have the battery tested. When the batteries on these cars are going bad they light up the entire Christmas tree with random warnings and faults.

 

+1 on the battery .....a partially discharged or failing battery is the primary cause of weird electrical/electronic behaviour on these cars.

If, after eliminating battery as the cause you still have multiple lights displayed, a scantool will tell if there are any relevant stored or pending faults.

Graham

 

+2

also, it probably gets speed info from ABS but with that not working right...

 

The battery was recently replaced. I read in another (incomplete) thread that it might have something to do with the CAN?

 

The whole car is connected through it so you're not getting any useful info by guessing.

Read the codes for the whole car and see what's wrong.

 

On the early cars, the ABS module has the known problem of failing solder on the power posts to the circuit board. It can be "easily" fixed, but requires some work to get the module out of the car and the shell broken into. There are many posts for this. The line of thought would be that if there is no power to the ABS module, the ABS light somehow goes on, and there is no reading of the speed, hence no speedometer.

Other line of thought is to check the TSBs related to the instrument cluster (jagrepair.com). There is a known failed solder point that somehow breaks the CAN network. This can apparently be repaired seemingly easily, too.

As usual, best is to connect a code reader and try to get some data. One data point is to check if there is a read of the vehicle speed over OBDII. If there is, the ABS module is likely fine, and the IC becomes suspect.

Best of luck, keep us posted.

 

Thanks, I think you may have narrowed it down. The instrument lights also flicker somewhat.

 

Thanks Fred Mertz!

Checked the TSB and I think you may have found the solution!

 

Flickering lights a sure sign of either a duff battery or a bad earth. Id bet money on the earth, especially as you say the battery was recently replaced. Do a Google search for 'flickering car lights' and I bet you get lots of hits for a bad earth.