Hopefully someone might be able to shed some light on this that I've found myself into. With the snowy weather last night, I was doing my darndest to make it home, which involved spinning the wheels up a bit of a hill along the way for a stretch. It triggered the ABS light to fire up, and killed the traction control (which was already turned off manually) but gave the message unavailable. Once over the hill, I realized the brake pedal was rock hard. VERY hard, to where it took a lot of pressure to get it depressed far enough to actually stop the car. At this point, I assumed I was just running 'manual' brakes, and stopped the car, turned it off, gave it a minute and restarted. Traction lights cleared, and as I got the car up to 10 mph, the ABS light went off.

The brake pedal though, has not changed, even after sitting overnight. It takes a tremendous amount of force to press the pedal down, and while I like having leg day on my daily commute, I'm trying to see if anyone would know any hot spots I should look at to diagnose this out. There are no more lights, and no more codes in response. My drive to work today was interesting to say the least.

I would love to have normal brakes back! Any suggestions?

 

Vacuum hoses to the booster ?

 

Someone here at work suggested that too, so when I get out of my meeting, I'll go see if the hood isn't frozen shut and I can check. I would give anything for a quick fix!

 

well, that didn't get me anywhere. Went out, pulled the covers off and checked, and no obvious issues with the vacuum line to the booster, unless it's something where it hooks under the throttle body, but from what limited reach and vision I had, everything still appears secure there.

Next step will be trying a hard reset on lunch, not that I expect a miracle, but might as well.

 

It does sound a lot like a booster issue, maybe not an external vacuum leak but possibly an internal failure? I guess something in the master cylinder piston could have failed causing that to bind up, or a stuck valve, etc? The ABS may just be a coincedence, unless the ABS valves are stuck shut, which I'm not even sure if that's even a possibility.

You could isolate the booster by taking a wheel off and "bleeding" a brake, just pick a caliper and act like you're bleeding it. Crack the bleeder open and try and depress the pedal - if it sinks steadily without tons of force, it's most likely a booster issue, if there is still lots of resistance it *may* be something else.