splazo

My 1997 Legacy recently started throwing a P0740 (torque converter clutch system malfunction) code, but doesn't have any symptoms at all. Shifts fine through all gears including the top one. Never really have to rev the thing about 3000 rpm to cruise on the highway. I've wiped the code, but it comes back again once I hit highway speed. My plan for now is to ignore the situation. Anyone think I should do something different?

> Maybe something came loose in the drum and whacked the sensor. That's exactly what happened. Not sure exactly what failed first, but when I popped off the rotor, all sorts of interesting things came pouring out. About half of the tone wheel has been turned into little chunks and the e-brake shoe was more or less floating around freely in a few different pieces. Why things would have blown apart at just that moment is still a bit of a mystery to me, since as mentioned earlier, I hadn't been messing with the brakes at all and hadn't previously had any issues there. It would seem that at one scenario that can lead to the ambiguous codes 42 and 44 is to have the tone wheel blow apart inside the drum. Car seems perfectly drivable for now. I'll deal with all that misery when I get home. Btw, I've been doing this work outside a tent in the woods, so every time I need a new tool, it's an hour and a half walk each way. I've just finished up a couple of months work in the bush and figured the campsite was as good a place as anywhere to get my car up to snuff before winter hit. (It's almost impossible to find any where to work on a car in Vancouver - a whole town built without driveways or garages). I've already dealt with all the usual suspects in the front end - bearings, ball joints, CV joints - but it looks like the rear end may still need a bit of attention before I start asking this thing to get me to the ski hill all winter. Thanks for all the insightful help. And patience with my rather limited grasp of what sorts of problems ABS can actually cause.

Possible the ABS light and codes are just a side effect of some greater snafu. No visible issues without taking things apart. Didn't put a wrench to any rear brake components to install struts. Except for unclipping brake line from strut of course. Only shabbiness on my part was zap strapping line to bracket because clip didn't fit properly on after market strut. Don't really see this as a likely suspect.

Going to have a closer look tomorrow am. Too hot to wrench here by 11am. 30 degrees Celsius and up day after day. Just changed rear struts. May have damaged sensor then. Brakes mostly work fine but intermittently scary. Bumps and tight turning bring out the worst in them. Fuse box under hood crypticly labelled. No mention of ABS. Wreckers here don't have much to help. Only older legacies have no ABS.

my rear abs sensor has given up on my 1997 legacy. I am many hours from home in a town I have no desire to see ever again (sorry Cranbrook). I really don't want to deal with the subtleties of ABS here. Car does some pretty alarming clunking and scraping so driving home as is isn't really an option. Can I just pull the plug on the ABS pump and get on with my life for the time being? I'm getting codes 26, 42 & 44.

A full replacement axle with both slip joints nicely packed with fresh bearings and a couple of new boots only goes for about $50 on rockauto.com. Things probably aren't super clean inside your CV joint by now if you've been procrastinating on this job at all. That said, winter before last I drove around for several months with a piece of leather shop apron zap strapped in place of the torn boot while I was waiting for the weather to warm up.