Here is my experience with ABS warning on my Santa Fe 2014 2WD and how I think I fixed it!
Summary : I was suspecting loose connection at the Speed sensor, I just disconnected the ABS cable and cleaned the connection point with WD-40 spray and connected it back by firmly pressing the latch.
Full Story
From a recent Sunday trip to Male Mahadeshwara hills from Bangalore which is around 200km, I noticed the ABS warning lighting up on the cluster during my return.
First time I spotted this was on Mysore Highway right after starting from a short pit stop for Tea.
The pattern was like, Once the key is put into ACC position, the speedometer needle fluctuated b/w 0-10km randomly while the ABS is lit.
I drove my car with this ABS warning ON for ~100km. I did not notice any erratic movements in the speed needle during this drive, I was monitoring it closely.
I was not in a position to take the car to HASS until next weekend. However, I had to take out the car for short distances meanwhile, I noticed the ABS warning was not consistent, but was showing up only sometimes, very randomly.
I took the vehicle to Hyundai ASS the next Friday as I had a 4 days trip planned for kids' vacation, Bangalore-Madurai-Jatayu Earth Centre-Varkala Beach-Thiruvanathapuram(Anantha Padhmanabha Temple)-Kanyakumari-Bangalore which was ~1500km.
The warning light was off when I took it to the nearby HASS, the service manager could see the ABS warning logs in history, showing the Left-Rear ABS sensor being faulty.
He cleared the ABS warning log from history and suggested to replace the same if the warning lights up again. He was perfectly OK to go ahead with the trip with a faulty(possibly) sensor on LR wheel.
He says, the ABS will function on the rest 3 wheels just normally and normal braking will work on the LR Wheel which I totally agree to.
Now, during this 1500km of drive, I noticed the ABS warning intermittently, I can say around 30% of the times. I was extra cautious while driving in rain, muddy roads and patchy roads during the trip.
My question was, the Speed sensor should either fully function or fail (Please correct my understanding if otherwise), but how can it fail intermittently?
I was suspecting loose connection at the Speed sensor, I just disconnected the ABS cable and cleaned the connection surface with WD-40 spray and connected it back by firmly pressing the latch.
Its been couple of hundred Kilometers since the fix, the warning has not shown up till now, from earlier experience it should have shown up at least once by now.
I am just hoping this to be a permanent fix.