Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting ABS light came on

Okay, I just bought this car like three days ago. It's a 1997 Contour Sport V6 MTX. It has a 50/50 3-month/3,000 mile warranty on it from the local dealership I bought it from. I've just been driving it around for a few days, trying to see if anything's gonna go wrong, because if I want anything to go wrong, it should be now, while I can take it to the dealer and have them fix it.

Well, in a little bit of spirited driving, I sped up and braked hard, and the ABS light came on. Nothing else seemed off...the brakes work fine...but the ABS light came on and stayed on the whole time I was driving it home. I looked in the owner's manual to see what it said about the light being on, and of course it said something about getting it serviced. Next I inspected all the fuses that dealt with ABS. At least, the ones under the hood in the little distribution fuse box there... There are two fuses that deal with ABS there, and one of them is supposed to be a 60A, and it's instead an 80A fuse...but I guess a higher rating wouldn't hurt anything...? The other is supposed to be a 30A fuse...in its place was a 20A fuse...it wasn't blown, but I replaced it with the correct rating fuse anyway.

Now, there is a vague picture in the manual about how to access the under-dash fuse box... but it's not in the location it says it's supposed to be in... I can get under there okay and I look up and see the box and the fuse listing on the side, but I'm not sure how to access it... there is a little black box attached to a larger box, and the smaller box has two clips on the ends, indicating that one can pull it off... but I couldn't get it to come off... and I don't want to break it, so I wondered if anyone could tell me how to access that box...or if anyone has any other ideas about why the ABS light would come on, those suggestions would be appreciated as well.

Note: The light still stays on when I turn on the car...but it goes out after about a minute, and there does not seem to be any detrimental effect on braking power. But the light is annoying, and I want to fix it if there's something wrong with the ABS. I might take it to the dealership on Monday if I can't figure it out, and hopefully they'll do it for free since it hasn't even been a week... but if I can do it myself, all the better.

Sorry for the long post, but any responses would be appreciated.

The under-dash fuse panel? just push a small button on the side of it, and it pops down (on my car it does at least )

Yeah, it looks like there's a couple clips on it to push and pop it out...but it won't budge...so I dunno..maybe I'll try again.

Mine does that. Anytime the ABS does its ABS thing, the light will come on. Everything seems to be OK, just the light is on. It goes away after a day or two, so I don't really pay it much attention.