8.8 swap with ABS

So I got finished with my 8.8 swap today (standard swap, nothing special there) and just out of sheer curiosity decided to see if the Ford ABS/Speedometer sensor would talk to the Jeep computer. I cut the Jeep ABS wires and stripped back the rubber outer casing and the insulation. The two wires from the Ford sensor were similarly stripped. Since each side of the Jeep wires consists of a brown and black wire, I twisted both browns and both blacks together and then twisted them to the red and green wires from the Ford sensor. After trying connecting the red to black and green to brown, I still had an ABS light in the dash. I tried the other way, red to brown and green to black and lo and behold, no ABS light! Having found the right combination of wires, I soldered the connections, covered them with two layers of heat shrink tubing and then split wire loom to protect the whole thing. Almost looks factory. Since this particular 8.8 came from a '98 Eddie Bauer Explorer so I can only vouch for the wire colors described above. The good news is, you have a 50/50 shot at getting it right. Like I said, I just finished the swap earlier today so I'll report back after I drive it a while, but for right now, it looks like if you want to keep ABS with an 8.8 swap, all you have to do is splice some wires together.

Why would you waste your time with hooking up the ABS? Maybe you could sell your jeep and buy a minivan.

It was there? :dunno:

Starting next winter, this jeep will be spending the rest of it's life back up in Alaska and will be a year-round daily driver so there's that.

hammer3198 said:

Why would you waste your time with hooking up the ABS? Maybe you could sell your jeep and buy a minivan.

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Ignore the troll.

Nice find dude!

hammer3198 said:

Why would you waste your time with hooking up the ABS? Maybe you could sell your jeep and buy a minivan.

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nominated

FWIW, I believe the general consensus is that the XJ ABS system isn't exactly that amazing and not worth the effort of hooking up.

bigalpha said:

FWIW, I believe the general consensus is that the XJ ABS system isn't exactly that amazing and not worth the effort of hooking up.

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You're probably right, but now at least I can stop wondering if hooking up the 8.8 sensor would work. Once I get back to someplace that has snow and ice, I can experiment with pulling the fuse to see which way I prefer. Maybe even wire a switch to turn the ABS on and off at will...

Do you know the tooth count on the 8.8 tone ring?

hammer3198 said:

Why would you waste your time with hooking up the ABS? Maybe you could sell your jeep and buy a minivan.

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I'm going to agree with some of this after playing in snow and ice with abs it got pulled. The XJ abs is worthless in any road conditions and got worse in snow and ice.

Wires are hooked up and no light doesn't mean it will work. On the 8.8, you have to grind every other tooth off on the tone ring for it to work properly with the Jeep ABS. I did this when I put the 8.8 in my ZJ. Afterwards, I would disconnect the plug so my rears would lock up while 4 wheeling then reinstall the plug after.

Locked98GC said:

Wires are hooked up and no light doesn't mean it will work. On the 8.8, you have to grind every other tooth off on the tone ring for it to work properly with the Jeep ABS. I did this when I put the 8.8 in my ZJ. Afterwards, I would disconnect the plug so my rears would lock up while 4 wheeling then reinstall the plug after.

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Good to know.

Today I actually drove more than just around the yard and the light came back on after a couple of miles. Given that the consensus is that the XJ ABS sucks, and I don't really care to fool with it anymore, I'll be pulling the fuse and relay.

If you pull the fuse and relay does it function just like regular old brakes?

Yep. It looks like Chrysler changed the design of the ABS system in '92 so that when the ABS failed it defaulted to normal braking. Before that it was necessary for the brakes to function.

http://www.naxja.org/html/techarticles/uninstall_OEM_ABS.htm