I bought my Protege 2 years ago as my first car and I love the choice I made, certainly better than anything else of the age or budget range... Hell, it even beats my mom's 2011 Elantra on fuel economy while outputting at least the same power.

Anyways, about 6 weeks ago my ABS began to go faulty. As in, it would give me pretty hard resistance randomly when on drive pavement and even going slowly. This was scary, not wanting to dump money into my car as winter is leaving I decided to pull the ABS fuse to just disable it. This worked, however that same day I noticed when going on the highway that when I hit around 120kmph my O/D light started flashing and my car would rev to 5000-6000rpm. This would only happen for a few seconds and then be fine.

My question is, would pulling the ABS fuse on this car affect the overdrive or is this simply a fluke? I took it to the mechanic and it cost me $50 for them to tell me the fuses aren't related and to take it to a transmission shop, with no further hints.

Now, typically I would just put the fuse back in and test it out on the highway again, however my front wheel bearings seem to be pretty shot all of a sudden so I would rather not take it to high speeds before getting those fixed. I'm not interested in repairing those if the O/D is a larger, more expensive issue.

Any ideas? I have no problem repairing the front wheel bearings if the overdrive is likely a non-issue.

The car has 175,000km on it.

EDIT: I Forgot to mention, I have driven the car for a week after the overdrive issues at speeds <90km before the wheel bearings became a serious issue and there were no problems.

 

Sounds like the wheel bearings caused the abs issue. Replace them, and go from there.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I think you're probably right, with the ABS fuse in the lights will be off until after about 30-45 minutes of driving (usually) before coming on and completely disabling. During this time the ABS will randomly put brake resistance, a "loose" bearing or something sounds like it could cause this.

I'd love to spend the money to replace them, however I'm worried that there is a massive transmission repair cost coming with this overdrive problem which is why I'm specifically asking if anyone here has any idea if this is likely due to pulling my ABS fuse. If I have to shell out a bunch of money to fix this overdrive, rather than it being a small fix, then I will sadly have to move on from this car.

 

With that many issues, sell it. IMO.

 

Well after some thought, you've sort of convinced me now to repair the bearings. It does make sense that the bad wheel bearings could be causing ABS failure. If I repair the wheel bearings then I will at least be able to drive to work until I find a new car.

Any idea what replacing the two front wheel bearings should cost? I'll likely take it to the mechanic in the morning.