On one particular residential street there's a speed bump just before a stop sign. I'm already going pretty slowly (maybe 10 km/h) before I hit the bump and have my brakes GENTLY down when I go over it.

As soon as I go over the bump, I get a horrible vibration felt right up the brake pedal, and it's audible inside the cabin. Letting up on the brake, it goes away and I brake at the stop sign without further problems. Is this the antilock brake system engaging? I'm not pressing the brake hard at all.

It's only ever happened at this particular bump, and consistently does so.

 

im not sure what it sounds like, but it could be the car being bottomed out. I've had similar situation as you, where im pressing the brakes gently and then it was vibrating, was a smooth road tho and it wasnt a hard brake. try goin over the bump diagonally, if you dont hear it then that means it was bein bottomed out before. and by diagonally i mean where you would turn enough where one wheel (front right maybe) would go on the bump, go over then the front right would go up n over n the rear wheels too, after you get the front wheels over you can probably correct the car for the rear wheels, this sounds like a residential road since the bump is right at a stop sign, if it is, y not diagonally cross onto the other lane

 

sounds like ABS very odd...

 

It's the abs. Honda's have been known to have sensitive abs.

 

tell me bout sensitve ABS.... fired off the ABS so many times in my parents hybrid civic....

 

He's not bottoming out, doing that is a very distinctive scraping sound. My fit has been doing the same thing since I got it 2 years ago but it's not consistant like yours. I've got over 68000km on the car and there's never been a problem. If your worried go to the dealer and ask about it.

 

I don't think it's scraping either. I've gone over larger bumps, and they're nothing like this. Probably the only difference here is that I'm on the brake since the stop sign is right after.

In the next couple days I think I'll take it to an empty parking lot and try a "proper" ABS test, i.e. get up to a good speed then slam on the brakes... reading up on ABS, apparently a lot of people are surprised and let off the brakes the first time they feel the ABS, which unfortunately could mean running into the very thing they were slamming the brakes to avoid hitting.

 

yea it's just the ABS you're hearing/feeling. it overreacts in situations like those, even when you're at a crawl and go over a little bump or pothole a certain way. it's no biggie really.

 

I also think it is the ABS engaging. I have tried mine severel times, a few of them because off something I wanted to avoid, like a car coming sliding sidewise into the street I'm driving in. And I often in the wintertime like to try to see how slippery it is and hit the brake until the ABS engaging, then I got the feel of how slippery the ice/snow is on that particular day and road.

It is also good to have practised the ABS feeling and steering away from sudden situations under safe condidions. Then you know how to react and how the car reacts when a real situation happens.

 

Definitely ABS. The Fit's ABS is extremely senstive. I believe what's happening is when you go over the bump, the wheels have less weight over them due to physics, therefore triggering the ABS into thinking there is a loss of traction.

Has happened to me over bumps as benign as pulling into a driveway.

 

I've noticed when I happen to be applying the brakes, even gently, when going over a bump or dip (any road irregularity) then the fit's brakes make the weirdest noises. This is a known ABS phenomenon. I'm not fond of the effect as it makes me feel like I'm driving a Yugo. ABS, like anything has good and bad sides.

 

you don't want to be hitting the brakes as you go over bumps. You want to get all your braking out of the way before the speedbump, train tracks, pothole etc, so your wheels and linked parts can have more freedom of motion.

I don't know that much about car mechanics so I'm sorry I can't be any more specific, but my daddy taught me that braking over speedbumps is a bad, bad, thing!