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ABS lgiht on?

746 views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  neezyGS 
#1 ·
I recently replaced my brakes and rotors with brembo blanks and hawp hp+ pads. Any idea why my ABS light is on?
 
#2 ·
yeah. your where im at now. my friend is a GREAT mechanic and he said i did my brakes wrong when i replaced my pads. he said with ABS systems you MUST do EVERYTHING correctly or you can have big problems :/

soooo.... just by saying your ABS light is on means that your ABS system has a problem. I just talked to my friend for about an hour last night about our brake systems and ABS systems. he said to not even Fu@k with the ABS system until i read about 20 hours worth of information about the ABS system. according to him there is enough pressure in the ABS system to shoot the dot3 fluid so fast it can go right through you like a bullet. if you do not work on an ABS system correctly you can kill yourself.

now with that said, what could your problem be?
from the information i learned last night i can offer some ideas as to what it might be, but i cant tell you how you would fix it and i HIGHLY recommend you to NOT work on the ABS yourself withough having someone that REALLY knows their sh!t.

i believe your light is on because your ABS has been disabled.... our cars safe gaurd the braking system when theirs problems in it by by-passing certain systems such as the ABS system...meaning the brakes will still work, but the ABS will probably not.

you might have air in the ABS system or some other type of contaminate such as brake dust, rust, water, etc...

heres what he told me to do to correctly diognose a brake problem.

first... flush/bleed the four calipers starting from the rear right first.

while bleeding/flushing check for any leaks and balooning in the soft brake lines.

then he said to take the car for a test drive.

now he has been a GREAT mechanic for many years and the test drive he told me to do is the correct way to test a car...so the company he works for cannot get sued for not testing the brakes well enough.

i will try to complete the test drive he told me, but dont follow this advice, to do after i bleed/flush the brake system.

1. test for pedal pressure first and for most by getting in the car,,, key out of ignition,,,, and depressing the pedal about half way and keep it there for 1-2 minutes to see if the pressure holds steady.

2. test the e-brake ,,,,key still out,,,, by counting the number of clicks it takes to get a good lock on the brakes.. he said 9 clicks is good.

3. now you can try doing these top two with the key on

4. then drive the car on a street or in a parking lot...less people around preferably and take it up past 20-25 mph where the ABS will run a second self-diagnostic and check for correctness throughout the whole system once more. if the light comes on, then your ABS has failed your system and shut it off.



i believe thats where you are.... i think your ABS has shut off and is saying to check the system thoroughly.

if i can get other opinions on my response that would be great.

Andy, please be advised that ABS/braking systems are extremely important to work on correctly and please do NOT use my information as what to do with your car. i am just trying to give you some ideas of the complexity of your problem. either way you need to study up on some good information or take your car to a mechanic.

good luck....oh ill be doing my brakes later today and ill tell you how they go.

BTW i have a 94ls also... lol.
 
#3 ·
I have that problem too. My abs light always comes on. I think it might have a leak or something. Could you get your mechanic friend to give you a ballpark quote on how much this would be to fix? (Worst case) And would you recommend going to any mechanic, or is it something people w/ ABS problems should take up to Acura and have fixed there?
 
#4 ·
ok hears what he said. becuase i asked him these questions last night also...lol.

ballpark price to get it worked on he has no idea because he said the front office handles the pricing he just gets paid to do it. he said new/reman ABS units are around $500 ...not counting labor/anything else needed. he said that mechanics like himself who do work on hondas/acuras/imports will be cheaper than acura/honda dealerships, but they will possibly take longer (1-3) days he guessed. acura may take half a day to one day to do this work because they have honda parts they can swap in and out of your car to isolate the problem quicker. either way you go its going to take a while and some money, maybe a little or maybe a lot, dunno.

as far as what i will be doing with my car... i think i will flush/bleed the regular brake system and not even touch the ABS system. if my problem is not fixed after the flush i will take it to a mechanic, possibly my friend if he can fix it for a good price.( hes farther than the place down the block from me and i dont want to pay for a tow on top of a brake job)
 
#5 ·
Ok theres so much Strange info in this thread I dare not tackle it all. First of all.. The ABS system is a totally a seperate system from your regular braking system. Changing your rotors and pads would not affect it in anyway because you arent touching the abs system, however if somewhere in the process of you screwing with the brakes and you pinched a line then it would affect it.
Replacing rotors and pads should not affect anything unless like I said by accident you hit or broke something like an abs sensor etc. Now if you had a leak in your braking system you would notice it very quickly.. The braking system is a virtually air tight system hence just a bit of air will be very noticeable.
Ok now then, first off Acura dosent swap parts in or out to diagnose problems..thats just stupid. They have a code reader, Or you can just use this article, im not sure if works for OBDII as well as OBDI because I though I heard some controversy about that a while ago. If you just changed pads and rotors there usually is no bleeding neccesary, just find out what code your abs is throwing. It is possible that you hooked up the E-Brake line improperly and it is dragging on the rears causing your abs to throw a code. And just so you know I'm a service tech at a shop. Anyway I just woke up and im hungry so i'm going to go.
 
#6 ·
I aven't changed the rear yet... I only did the front. When I did the brake install, I also did the bushings install and I had to remove the abs line for a bit to remove the control arms. Before I did this the ABS light didn't come on so I think I might have pinched the brake line by mistake. It's wayyy too cold out there so I haven't had a chance to look at it yet.
 
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