break wear indicator bypass D2 FL
 

due to a broken wire on one disc I have run for a long time with the break wear indicator illuminated ; if I understand correctly this will no longer pass the MOT
at the same time I have had an intermittent vibration on the front which I traced to the pistons on one brake not retracting [ temperature would mount to 400C as compared to 150C the other side ]

as the pads were about half worn I decided to have them changed at the same time ,hence fix the indicator

well the vibration has disappeared ....but the indicator has not ! the best laid plants of mice and men etc


so after a read of our colour blind librarian's sticky I decided a by pass was the best solution , stripped out the dash and tried to find the required brown and black wire ; can I find it , can I **** ; plenty of brown wires , some with other colours on them, but no black ; maybe I am developing colour blindness !


has any one else tried this on on a FL ? or does anyone know another method ?

as we say in france M'aidez ,M'aidez

I am a Librarian not an author!

Did you read this?

http://www.audipages.com/Tech_Articl...nsorshort.html

of course I did !
who authored the sticky then ?

The Sticky is a catalogue not a novel. I:tuttut:

I wondered if anyone would notice the deliberate mistake in my thread title
is it just me that noticed that the stickies have both axles and axels ?

The spelling differences could be due to a number of things. It could be to do with the region of the world in which the article was written (colour in the UK, color in the US), it could be to do with the author not having English as their native language and spelling the word phonetically (ax-el v. axle), or it could be my favourite and that is a combination of laziness and sending TXT messages. Since the advent of TXT messages and the abbreviation of every word, fewer people care if they spell things correctly or not, and will use the excuse 'they will know what I mean' e.g. 'break wear indicator'.

+++

e.g. 'break where'

having tried without success to by pass this warning light I have read up a little on the reality of the MOT failure
having just fitted new pads [ not quite run in ] I find the following on a website called mottester

brake pad warning light illuminated is a failure......unless it can be seen that there is another reason

clearly that is the case here with new pads ......or is it ?

any comment appreciated

I guess that depends on the individual tester.

Assuming the problem is in the ABS sensor cable assembly and not the body harness, it would be possible to make a plug n play adapter that sits between the two connectors which completes the pad sensor circuit.

Or of course trace the fault in the wiring and repair it. Its usually corroded or loose pins in the connector at the caliper or the other end where it joins the body harness. I've seen one with a break in the cable assembly - if its got alloy hubs the ABS sensor assembly is cheap enough.

I meant to look up which connector it is on the cluster but I forgot sorry!

tks again mikki , but I'm not clear where the ABS sensor comes into this ; I'm aware of cars where the pad sensor is combined with a handbrake sensor but didn't think this applied with on the D2 ...are you saying that the ABS sensor is combined with the pad sensor in some way ? there is no ABS light illuminated

They aren't related electrically, but the ABS sensor cable assembly provides the wiring between the caliper and the car.

http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/attachmen...1&d=1539982487

Most often its corrosion on the connectors of the pad wear connector. Cleaning them up with a tiny round file and tweaking them with a tiny screwdriver often helps. Ditto the body harness connector. A squirt of WD40 stops them corroding again.

I thought the D2 was a very simple circuit back to the instruments.
Could be a fault there …..

wow ! I had no idea ! so in effect there is a there is a sub harness with the ABS and pad wear wires running through ; in case I can't cure the problem by cleaning up the pad wear connector where do I find the body harness connector to clean it up ?

if that doesn't work presumably our sponsors could find me a replacement sub harness !

The body harness connector is behind the front portion of the wheel arch liner.

A8parts may have some sensors in stock but it can be a pretty unpleasant job to change them. Either they just come straight out, or they are seized in place and the bolt snaps in the hub. Tbh if it came to it, I'd hard-wire out the pad sensor before I changed an ABS sensor to cure a pad sensor issue.

well followed instructions as per MJ....spent more time getting out the wheel arch liners than fiddling with the wiring ; no joy

so short circuited each side in turn to get a circuit ; still no joy...I think the wiring colours are green and yellow one side black and yellow the other

have I misunderstood what you meant by hard wired mikki ? I tested the new pads for continuity on a belt and braces principle

Hardwire behind dash.

Did you do one side at a time? Its a single loop from the cluster so you need to short both sides at the same time to get the light out.

tried that .....to no avail !

HOWEVER

last year I decided to have a go to get rid of the light using the method suggested by ainarrsems .read the sticky , in the end found the correct wire to short out but couldn't undo the multiplug to find the correct wire to earth on .... being nervous of doing the wrong thing I applied my usual methodology of ...if at first you don't succeed ...give up [ not an MOT failure last year ]
so this year with the MOT coming up started again [ force majeure ] and decided to try and find the fault and solve my problem
as you can see mikki has led me through the most likely problems , but to no avail , as stated

so , getting desperate I decide to have another go at the behind the instrument method , still couldn't open the multiplug , so scotchlocked a piece of thin stranded wire to the brown /black wire as stated in the sticky and earthed it to the chassis

VOILA

Following this post as I too have constant brake pad warning indicators on, have got quite used to it to be honest but if the MOT is going to start checking it I will have to do something about it.

Just out of curiousity, is the MOT going to test its function or just whether the warning light is on or not? i.e. if the light is off, is that an instant pass on that part or will they simulate a worn break pad check to see if the light functions ok?

I'm not so sure they would start testing this. After all, it is just an indicator warning that the pad is getting low, and with our brake pads, the warning comes on when there's about 50% of pad wear left. I had a similar problem after replacing my pads, and never got to the bottom of it. Ironically, when I started using the car (after it sat for 7 -8 months), the calipers were seizing, and I ended up cooking one of the pad wires. Now that the calipers are working, the indicator light isn't on permanently, so it's just not a snug connector somewhere.