My 05 VZ Calais has been playing up lately. Whilst driving, i get the esp and abs failed on the dash, and it will not disapear unless i turn the engine off and on. At times it will also display shortly after i turn on the car. This has been happening too often now as almost every time i drive the car, the fault appears on the dash. Although i dont think its causing to much trouble, its a pain having to turn the car off and on to get rid of it. Any ideas???
Have you recently done ANY modifications or changes at all to the car...in particular to the electrical side of things such as installing HID headlights or led tail lights etc?
I have a few mods, led parkers and reverse lights, new head units, subs. I dont see how that can affect it though? My mate has the exact same car as mine with the exact same mods and his car is fine??
Any electrical change from factory spec can affect different cars in different ways. I agree with you that your mods listed don't seem to be enough to muck with the cars electrical system to cause your issues. Can't see LED Reverse lights affecting anything but could be wrong. Just to let you know though from my experience; When I changed to HID headlights a year ago, upon turning the HIDs on for the first time each day after a cold start, I would get "ABS and ESP Fail" on my dash for only about 5 seconds. This wasn't due to a dying battery (as I still have the same battery a year on), it was due to the quick burst of power that the HID lights needed at start up and this mucked with the cars electrics and possibly made the car think the battery was failing. I have since taken out the HID lights on low beam due to unwanted and uneven lighting spread compared with the factory halogen. Another example was, when I installed LED brake lights (including high rise rear brake light in my sedan), I had cruise control not work and I think ESP error may have come up on dash also. Upon visiting my mate who owns and is an auto electrician, he advised that I needed a load resistor on just one of the tail light circuits with the new LEDs as the cruise control and ESP do checks upon start up to the braking system. If there is no load/or very little (due to LEDs) on the lighting circuit, it throws the system out. Just a picture below to show the load resistor I needed after LED brake light install. As LEDs consume very little power, this load resistor puts enough load onto the circuit to fix any cruise control/ESP or computer faults that may arise. Yes the resistor is 24 volt. This doesn't get as hot as a 12 volt but still provides the load required. 6-12 months on and never another issue regarding my LED install. Regards Matt
