the light can be on for any one of a dozen reasons. but if it is on, your ABS WILL NOT WORK. the guy who told mom25boys it would work is WRONG.
but, just because your ABS will not work doesn't mean your brakes will not work. ABS is not really necessary anyway as long as you know how to use non-ABS brakes in a panic stop. crash statistics have failed to prove that ABS prevents accidents, surprisingly. :twocents:
SPB that's not completely true...just because the SES ABS light is currently on does not mean that the ABS is totally non-functional. If the computer has thrown a code it will stay lit on the dash until the issue is resolved...but that doesn't mean that the computer has totally disabled the ABS until the issue is fixed, it just means that at some point the issue did pop up and that you can not RELY on the ABS to work when you would expect it to.
I can drive around with a SES light lit forever and a day and have it turn out to be a sparkplug misfire code or whatever...doesn't mean that EVERY time the sparkplug fires that it misfires, just that it's misfired enough times in the course of a set amount of time that it triggers the computer to engage the SES light and leave it lit until either the code is cleared or the issue is resolved AND the code is cleared.
It could also be a wiring issue...Windstars/Aerostars were NOTORIOUS for having faulty wiring issues...the ABS may be perfectly fine and there might be a short in the wiring somewhere triggering the ABS light to have lit.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the guy who told MOM25BOYS that the ABS *would* work is dead wrong...probably not the best thing to say in a sue-happy, liability concious world, but not dead wrong. :twocents: