For a while my emergency brake light and ABS light have been coming on and staying on. It's a manual so it has no traction control so I'm not sure if this is the same issue as I see other posts about trac light ABS. I was told it's possibly a broken wire or bad connection or something but it has also been warping rotors like crazy. My last set seemed to suddenly warp and had a nasty vibration when braking so I replaced them a couple months ago. Problem solved no vibration, until a couple weeks ago the vibration/pulsing has come back. I'm not hard on brakes. I gear down when I come up to a stop, so question is 1 what do these dash lights mean? and 2 what could be cause my rotors to warp or cause the pulsing in the brakes? I tourque everything to spec too when I do mechanical work and I retorque my wheels after a day or so to make sure they're good, since someone told me that could cause the warping.
You're not going to know for sure what's wrong until you take the car somewhere and have the codes read. You might have to try a dealer as the ABS codes are not generally covered by inexpensive generic code readers. I've been told that some FLAPS (friendly local auto parts stores) will read codes for free, but I'm sceptical that they can get the ABS codes.
On my car, the ABS and Brake lights were both on and it turned out that the ABS pump was bad. This is a $300+ part in the aftermarket, $600 from a dealer and the whole install can cost over $1000 (don't ask how I know) if you can't do the work yourself. A reputable indy shop will be more reasonable, but you have to find one first. There are other less expensive causes like a bad or disconnected wheel speed sensor, but I doubt that's your problem. If you're rampantly warping rotors, I'd suspect the rear brakes aren't doing their fair share of the work. In any case, I don't short change my brakes and always fix brake problems. Since the arthritis has set in, I have most of it done professionally, but when I was young enough to do this, they didn't even make self adjusting brakes, let alone disks or ABS. Good luck.
Okay thanks. I wasn't sure if these lights being on meant there would be a code. I definately want to get this fixed since it seems to be messing with my brake system. Plus replaceing rotors every couple months gets expensive. Thanks though. I work at a chev dealership so I'll get them to read the codes.
Ok, dealership plugged it into the code reader and got nothing. They thought it was odd the light was on but wasn't throwing a code. they Told me it's likely to be a loose or corroded wire on the abs/speed sensor. I've figured out which wheel doesn't have abs engaging but umm next question is where is this sensor?
