ABS module or sensor failure on the 2001 Ford Ranger
4 crashes 4 of the 13 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 5 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When abs module or sensor failure gets reported
There are 13 reports of ABS module or sensor failure on the 2001 Ford Ranger, 5 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 14th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 40,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 4 a crash is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $500–$2,400 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 7 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2004, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 1996 at 190,000 miles.
By volume the 1999 carries the most reports, with 45; the 2001 has 13. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Traveling approx 68 MPH I swurved to avoid going off road.as I jerked the stirring wheel to my rt then back to my left I stepped on my brakes with a hard and consistant presssure,causing my front breaks lockup,which resulted in me losing control of my truck it !!spinning out of control I went only to come to rest after a frontal impact of approximately 55 to 60 mrh as well as a rear impact speed at this point unknown. Besides my front breaks locking up, neither my driver or passenger side air bags deployed.*ak
Tl*the contact owns a 2001 ford ranger. While driving 25 MPH, the ABS light illuminated. As of october 18, 2007, the dealer had not inspected the vehicle. The dealer disconnected the vehicle speed control as part of NHTSA campaign id number 07v336000 on october 17, 2007. The contact felt that the disconnection of the vehicle speed control caused the ABS to fail. The current and failure mileages were 97,000.
On several occasions attempted to apply brakes and with brake pedal clear down to floor, vehicle continued to move, seeming to accelerate, rather than slow down. First few times this happened, there was no one else in front of me or my wife at the stop sign, but today, there was. I had to swerve into the ditch to avoid a pile up. This occurred at 35 MPH. Damaged a fence and parked truck on someone's personal property. Minor damage to the ford ranger. Did not get problem checked out the first 2 times, as this occurred when wife was driving and the problem went away and was forgotten. I will definitely be taking it to the shop next week to have this checked out. Based on the other complaints, this seems to be a common problem with these rangers. How many others just haven't been reported, or perhaps died due to failure of the brakes and couldn't report the problem??? *tr
Also reported on the 2001 Ford Ranger
Other body or interior problem
Other suspension problem
Seat belt or retractor failure
Fuel tank, filler or EVAP failure
Rust or structural corrosion
Other wheel or tire problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 13 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 13 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does abs module or sensor failure happen on the 2001 Ford Ranger?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 40,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is abs module or sensor failure on the 2001 Ford Ranger?
13 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed