ABS module or sensor failure on the 2005 Honda Pilot
1 crash 1 injury 2 of the 24 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.
When abs module or sensor failure gets reported
Owners of the 2005 Honda Pilot report ABS module or sensor failure at a median of 105,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 35,000 miles and a quarter after 120,000 miles, from 23 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 95,000 miles. It is the 13th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 30,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 135,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 107,480 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
22% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30,000 miles | 36,200 miles | 103,000 miles | 120,000 miles | 137,480 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, 1 a crash and 1 an injury are 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2011, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 150,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
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.
I was driving my 2005 honda pilot form my home and made a left turn out of my subdivision. Suddenly the vehicle made a loud grinding noise that seemed to come from the front of it. It went away and I continued driving slowly (about 15 - 20 MPH) to see if I could detect something further wrong or if I had run over something. As I found no indication of the cause of the noise I continued on. Within approximately one city block the vehicle seemed to apply the brakes and slowed itself to a crawl. I did not apply the brakes! The noise again occurred while this happened. The noise, I realized, was similar to anti-lock brakes activating during a hard stop. This occurred three more times in rapid succession and then went away. I continued on trying to figure out what was wrong and applied the brakes myself. They seemed to work ok. As I proceeded , the brakes once again applied themselves (with absolutely no action from me) another four times. At this time the vsa light came on the dash. I attempted to turn it off, but was not sure if it did turn off or not. I drove another two to three miles without further problems. On may 10…
I have had a 2005 honda pilot for 2 1/2 years. On at least 3 occasions, the brakes apply themselves. It is a very dangerous event. The honda company must do something about this. The last incident of this type occurred last night, the date shown below. *tr
It was night, and my girlfriend and I just exited the freeway, we just turned onto a side street and made it 100 yards when all of the sudden it felt like my left front tire went flat or I hit something and it dragged, I immediately pulled over to inspect, and found nothing. I did notice the vsa and vsa activation indicators on, turning the car off and then on again reset the indicators. Oddly concerned we circled back to check for anything in the road, there was nothing. It happened again just a few minutes later, and the indicators came back on. It repeated itself a third time, and I drove home very worried it would happen on the freeway. Each instance was momentary and it pulled hard left each time with a load antilock brake type jarring vibration. From reading other stories I can see that this problem isn't one of a kind, and I haven't seen anyone post a fix for it. *tr
Also reported on the 2005 Honda Pilot
Other brake problem
Radiator or coolant leak
Other driver assistance problem
Other powertrain problem
Other electrical problem
Other body or interior problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 24 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 2005 Honda Pilot?
Across 23 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 105,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 35,000 miles and a quarter after 120,000 miles. 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 2005 Honda Pilot?
24 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 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