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I turned my car on today, heard a beep, looked at the dials, the Handbrake light was flashing and the ABS light was on, I turned the car off and back on, and the light just came on with the ignition then went off as it's supposed to.

Any ideas why it done this?

Cheers.

Could be that one of your ABS sensors (presumably on the back, right/left) had a momentary blip and triggered the ABS light?

Here endeth the extent of my knowledge about the ABS system

Keep an eye on it, if it doesn't repeat itself anytime soon then I guess you'll be OK? The only thing I can think of that might trigger it would be the way that the rear calipers sometimes stick (can be quite sticky indeed) after wet weather/washing the car and leaving it standing for an extended time (a few hours maybe).

Do you know anyone locally who has access to a VAG-COM - it might tell you if a fault has been logged?

Cheers

Mine did this about a year ago, stayed on for about an hour, was gonna get it checked out but next time I used the car it didn't come on and hasn't since.

I'll keep my eye out and if it doesn't do it again I won't worry, if it does I'll have to run it to VW, don't know anyone with VAG com locally unfortunately.

This happened to me alot when I first got the car, so i took it to vw and they said they 'replaced the abs sensor' , and so the light came back again and I noticed it happened alot when people got into the back seats. Looking under the rear passenger seat there's a connector which seems very sensitive to people sitting on it, if it does trigger the light off on the dash just disconnect and reconnect the cable and restart the car and after about 100 metres or so it should go. The actual abs itself was never affected though even if the light was on, but it was just annoying to have it lit up on the dash !

Prash wrote:This happened to me alot when I first got the car, I noticed it happened alot when people got into the back seats.

Same with me. I got told my brake light switch was about to go. they changed it and it has never come back on again.

Cheers for the advice guys, if this happens again, I'll check that sensor, it hasn't done it so far but I'll keep an eye out.

Thanks again.

yeah sounds like one of the abs sensors definately!!
i had both my rear ones changed on my polo, first under warranty and the second wasn't!
cost like £90 odd to replace!!
could also be a bit of dirt (silly but true) that has made it onto the sensor and is blocking the signal momentarily.
shouldn't be anything wrong with the actual brakes! but get it checked none the less!

Yeah checked the brakes when it came on, got up to 30 and braked HARD and it stopped very quick (last car didn't have ABS so I was shocked) like I say if it comes on again, I'll go to VW and get em to sting me to have a look.