Brakes Issue

[fushuman]

Whenever i'm braking somewhat hard, going at 40mph, it feels like the ABS kicks in right after and only when i go thru a pothole. I checked my brakes and their fine, and the ABS is fine as well.
Has anyone heard or experience something like this?

[BUSTaMOVE]

Well yeah abs isnt gonna kick in until it needs to to prevent loss of braking from one wheel,like say hitting a pot-hole.

[bitcore]

This is normal and is exactly what ABS is for. If ABS didn't kick in, your wheel would lock up during that momentary loss of traction and would cause a nice hard THUNK.

ABS is there to prevent you from ever locking the wheels up completely. This is good for two things:
1. The pulsation and non skid condition slows you down faster. (read up on static friction vs. kinetic friction in a physics book, once you get over the static friction force [locked wheels], it's much harder to stop)
2. You can still turn while your braking very hard (although not much, you still can) whereas if you locked the wheels up, you would simply ice skate as if you were on a skating rink. Turning the wheels would do nothing.

ABS wasn't designed for potholes... it dosn't really help much for them unless your REALLY braking and hit a pothole. Potholes tend to trick the speed sensing computers. The wheelspeed for one wheel will get out of bounds of what it should be, and the ABS (or traction control for the rear wheels) will kick in and do it's magic.