My abs light and advtrac turns off

I have had this issue on my [ 2005 Ford Truck Explorer Sport Trac 4WD 4.0L MFI SOHC 6cyl ]. What I found is that there was a front passenger wheel speed sensor failure and the speed for that wheel was reading 0mph flat. No fluctuations. My readout/failure could be different from your case in which wheel speed sensor and how it is faulting, but the computer system heavily relies on that data and freaks out when it gets bad data like 0mph.

Have you had issues with 4 wheel drive and/or lurching (feels like wheels lock up) during turns? If so, that would match my experience. The quick fix is to disable ABS completely by pulling its fuse located in the fuse box in the engine bay. However, I don’t think it would be my first step in treatment.

You can easily buy a cheap OBD2 scanner that can communicate with your phone via Bluetooth or buy one that is specific to ford but can read so much more from the car’s computer (including the live wheel speed data). I use the ELM327 and love it. You will need to download the Forscan Program and have a laptop that you can have with you in the vehicle. I use a laptop with very low specs from 2007 and the program works flawlessly.

Either way, I suggest you run a scan on the vehicle, and then you can look up any codes you read to better understand the possible issues you have with your car.

The good news is if you aren’t comfortable with the slightly more costly laptop adapter ELM327, the cheap OB2 Bluetooth scanner uses an app called Torque that is extremely user friendly and can even let you click the error codes it reads to go directly to a website that explains the codes in great detail.