General Maintenance & Repairs - brake light

Well my brake light on my dash was lighting up when i pushed my brake pedal down pretty far(i need to bleed breaks i think, arnt very firm). than eventaully tonight it stayed on and wont come off. whats the deal?

Do you mean the "ABS Inop" light? If so, that light is wired to the rear third brake light. Check to see if that light is out.

And if your brake pedal still feels soft after you've bled them, check your master cylinder. You may have to replace it.

The pedel is traveling too far. Probably because the pads are low causing the travel issue. Inspect all of the brakes. if they are getting skinny replace them. The pedel should come back after that. Bleeding is not part of normal maintainence. It's only needed after the system has been opened.

Brake pads wont cause a travel issue. it just uses more of the fluid from the master cylinder to hold them next to the rotor. Kinda easy way to tell if its the master cylinder is at a stop light push the pedal down a bit and see if it slowly keeps moving to the ground. if it keeps dropping to the floor the cylinder is most likely shot.

I had the same thing happen to me not long after I got my car- the pedal started going lower than normal. I knew it wasn't the master cylinder cause it didn't have any of those symptoms. The front pads were a little low, but not terrible and I just figured the light was on because the brake fluid was low. Just adding some brake fluid didn't turn the light off, so I just went ahead and put on some brakes. The pedal returned to normal and the light went off after about a week. I still think it was orginally just because the brake fluid was a little low, but I think the car had to run a certain number of cycles (starting, driving, and shutting off) before the light got turned off.

Brake pads wont cause a travel issue. it just uses more of the fluid from the master cylinder to hold them next to the rotor. Kinda easy way to tell if its the master cylinder is at a stop light push the pedal down a bit and see if it slowly keeps moving to the ground. if it keeps dropping to the floor the cylinder is most likely shot.


incorrect. Pad ware will absolutly cause a travel issue. Why do you think that there are adjustments to the rear disk and rear drums? Adjust a rear drump ALL the way in and see how low the pedal will be. Same goes for the fronts. More ware = the more the pistions are extended wich will correlate to pedal travel.