I almost pooped my pants the first time my wheel locked up on a banked curve in the truck.
I spent the next three weeks trying to get the #$$@ dongle talking to #@$#@$ windows 9 on my lady's #@$@# laptop before finding out that:
1) Holy crap these cars put out a lot of data. Just graphing wheel speeds vs vehicle speeds on two gyro's is pretty insane for 2000.
2) ABS Wheel sensors, unless you're in a climate with severe corrosion, are a good place to look but won't lock the wheel that way - they'd show a fail on the system diagnostics first (in most cases)
3) A very specific S-curve where you go through an entire motion was enough to engage the alarm any time, and at over 45MPH get a wheel lock
4) if your vehicle thinks it's going to crash, it will engage the wheel it thinks will keep you from crashing.
5) this may feel like it's trying to kill you, but in most cases, would only decelerate you and get you off the road.
6) It's still scary as #@$@#.
7) Used car dealers lie through their teeth. This issue was being masked by the dip**** dropping the torsion bars to the bump stops, which also hid the tears in the CV boots, the alignment issues, etc as the car had 90% of its weight on the front end.
8) How's your cruise control? I'd get intermittent disengagements of the Cruise on the highway (at odd times) without triggering an alarm
9) TO the best of my knowledge, these issues are NEVEr recorded in Codes for a dealer, etc, and unless you find the S-Curve that will trigger, almost impossible to replicate
To Diagnose:
Get proper tires, or at least properly inflated tires on all 4 corners. Preferably the same tire.
Get it aligned. Trying to diagnose something with the steering without an alignment is silly.
Put front end up in the air (isn't it cool that there's a cup for a floor jack in between the front axles?)
Put jacks under the frame and lock it in the air. Don't ever crawl under your rig while it's on a floor pump jack!
Shake those wheels. If it's moving up and down, think bearing etc.. If it's moving left and right, think tie rods.
My steering rack bushings probably need replaced, but the tie rod ends were horrible.
Climb under (after blocking the front end up in the air, not just with the jack)
Inspect.
Took a lot of diagnosing, but in the end it's usually simple things.
I Replaced Tie Rod Ends (inner and outer) problem was gone.
Next time it happened (beeping warning) I was getting on a highway. No lockup, but 3 miles later, the front passenger tire blew. Even in 2000, this truck knew when something wasn't right with the wheel balance and gyro.
New CV's, New BFG K02 285's on the factory 16's, a 4-year alignment special at Pep boys that I do every time I rotate the tires and it drives like this:
