Red brake alarm
 

tonight on the way home the red brake light in the DIS came on with the 3 beeps it kept clearing then coming back,as I was almost home I kept on driving as the brakes still worked well and the ABS light didn't come on.

At home I plugged in the pc and ran a check of all the ecu's ,but nothing showed apart from the usual brake light implausible signal.

The handbook says to check the brake fluid level ,but this was also at max. Has anyone heard of the sensor in the brake fluid cap failing and giving intermittent readings ?

I am suspecting this sensor attaches directly to the DIS and no real intelligence is used to report a low fluid level.

Could it possibly be low pads?

Or broken / shorting wiring being affected by the snow causing an intermittent alarm?

Don't think its pads ,the pad alarm is a yellow one a circle with what appears to be dotted pads to each side, I did have a quick look at the pads and they appear to have lots of meat left.
It was too cold to play with the brake fluid sensor wire tonight ,I will have a play with a multimeter in the morning ( as long as it don't snow )
I will let you know how I get on :)

Were the bars at the sides of the exclamation mark solid or broken?

Broken lines is brake wear, solid is a brake system problem... Not seen a failure in the fluid level sensor myself before, but not impossible.

Could it be the handbrake switch playing up, so it thinks you have the handbrake on?

They were solid, and the scan of the brakes was clean.

I went out this morning and had a look ,the level was right at max in the bottle ,but the connector looked a little strange,so i removed it ,gave it a clean and replaced then went for a small drive. So far the alarm hasn't came back ,may have just been a little oxidation in the connector ,I will be keeping a big eye on it but so far so good.
Real weird :)