I just pulled off the left axle hub and looked at the ring (this truck has two in the rear one on either side). It looks good. I'm gonna clean it off and reinstall it. Every part store has to order the sensor so it's gonna be a couple day before I get another sensor. Still not sure why the grinding sound or the intermittent warning lights...

 

You need the left rear sensor just replace it. A cracked tone ring could also give you an abs fault but its extremely rare to see a broken tone ring unless its a ford escape, and it would reset every time you turn the truck off usual. I wouldn't worry to much about U codes usually those just clear and don't pop back up

 

So I just realized...after I pulled my rear caliper off...I was able to pull my axle out and "inspect" my toner ring. Then I thought..."holy crap! I should not be able to do that!" Going inside the differential housing to find my c-clip now...

 

haha sounds like you found to source of both problems.

 

It very well could be both source of problems!
Turns out that the c-clip was just fine. The end of the axle sheared off. I'll take a picture tomorrow or day after; it was a really weird break. Looked like the end of the axle was welded on. if you are looking directly at the end of the axle, near the splines side, the chunk of metal that is on the inside part of the c-clip gave out. I looked at that and about 270 degrees of it looked concave and the other 90 degrees looked like it was a weld that snapped...I assumed it was all one piece and they cut a groove in the end of the axle for the c-clip to sit in...


Since the resistance showed correct on the speed sensor, I guess I'll try to plug that back in and see what happens. Is there an amount of time that it will take for the ABS system to reset for it to start reading no faults again?

 

Yeah it should be one piece with a groove for the C-clip. Post pics! I'm interested to see what happened. If you don't have a scanner that reads abs codes you can disconnect the battery to reset if it doesn't reset on its own. It should reset within a mile if its seeing the same reading at all four corners but thats coming from experience with older ford vehicles so who knows whats changed. Since you found it broken I'm assuming the axle walked a little causing the air gap between the tone ring and sensor to become to large which gave you an abs fault. If you see no damage to the sensor chances are its ok.

 

That's hardened steel shaft surprising it broke.

Hardened shaft sometimes fails with a bit of a spiral pattern; had it happen to a torsion bar years ago.

Yeah pictures would be interesting; nice logical trouble shooting.

 

Here is the pictures of the axle. Since when did they put O-rings in the groove where the c-clip goes? Also, checked the speed sensor on a fluke and it was showing like 600 units (?) where it needed 1500? I have an electrical engineer at work check it for me.

 

No pictures showed up.

 

fixed it...I think