front left lock up

[harold945]

Hi everyone, im writing this on my ps3 so i can only write in one stright line lol sorry. Anyway driving my ibiza tdi down the road doing about 50mph. I seen a motorbike in front of me didn't see he was stopped as the sun was behind me, hit the brakes and the front left locked up sending me skidding sideways down the road i took my foot off the brake but the pedal stayed down. managed to hold it and missed the bike and the tires down to the canvas on one spot now!!!! Ive owned the car for a month and the garage have had it for 3 weeks of that trying to fix the immobaliser. and now i got this! any ideas would be appreciated cheers

 

[Nath.]

You took your foot off of the brake and the pedal stayed down ???????

Are you sure this is the case as I would have thought that was ALMOST impossable

It is possable to flat spot a tyre even with ABS but the conditions need to be just WRONG in order for it to happen

I take it the ABS does actually work and there are no ABS warning lights on the dash ?

 

[harold945]

hi there is no ABS light up and the pedal did stay down!! only the left locked up tho. As the car came to a stop it popped back up. its a 2002 130 ibiza tdi. ive got pictures of the tyre so il try to get them posted.

 

[Nath.]

If the pedal stayed down I would say that the pedal mechanism must be sticking, I had a Peugeot 106 that had a squeaky brake pedal and the pivot bolt was loose, I tightened it up to cure the squeak and had an issue where the brake pedal was slow to come back up after it was pressed until I backed the bolt off a flat or 2

If the pedal is not slow to come back up I wouldn't want to drive it, it must be unsafe

I flat spotted a tyre on a mk4 Astra with ABS so I know it's passable if you punch the pedal hard enough

 

[Leigh15]

I take it the ABS light briefly illuminates when you turn the ignition on showing that the system is operational?

As Nathan says, it is possible to overcome ABS, but it's not easy or common. If you're sure that the brake pedal did stick then this definitely needs looking at - again as Nathan said, the pedal mechanism does seem a good place to start looking.

 

[harold945]

yer the ABS light flashes up when you turn the ignition, i just tried stamping on the brakes with the car not moving and it seems fine. At the time tho there was no judder you would get from ABS kickin in.

 

[muddyboots]

Does you car have EBA (Emergency Brake Assist) or whatever it's called ? I think most Mk4s do.

It tries to sense that you're braking in an emergency and helps apply max braking power even if you don't, and I think holds it on briefly - apparently because some people in an emergency lift off the brakes when they shouldn't. I think most Mk4s had this. I think it can give the sensation that the pedal stays down.

However, the ABS shouldn't have allowed the wheel to stay locked up - unless by that point the ABS released pressure to that wheel, it was so sideways that it was in terminal understeer and wouldn't have started rotating anyway when the brake was released

 

[danmay]

that don't sound quite right to me, not being a technical genius but that sounds bad!

 

[harold945]

just drove it back from work and its raining really bad so tried an emergency stop and same thing happened (it was an empty road of course) the front left locked, i could actually fully lift my foot so my mate could see i was off the brakes and it was still sliding. It does feel like the ABS is trying to work at first but then the pedal just sinks and wheel locks

 

[Nath.]

It's not safe then

 

[mhill]

did you get the tyre changed before you started driving it again?

 

[harold945]

ive got the spare on, a friend told me that if you get a flat spot it will always skid on that same spot if thats ture? Also had it on the VAG COM and nothing about that came up. im getting 17911 Load signal from alternator and 17978 engine start blocked by immobilizer. The second ones a tw4t !! ABS brakes says no fault code found

 

[Nath.]

Could be your front left damper is shot and so the front left is skipping and not in proper contact with the road when braking

They say the suspension dampers are half shot at 40k miles

Also I have seen 6 month old cars/vans on the motorway with 1 wheel skipping along with a shot damper quite a few times

 

[harold945]

cheers for the advice guys, just gonna give it back to the garage and tell them its their problem!

ill check out the damper to, its done 49k so could be that.

 

[muddyboots]

im getting 17911 Load signal from alternator

Aha, this *may* be related.

I know that ESP relies on a load signal from the alternator, and if it's not present, then ESP is disabled 10 mins after every startup. I wonder if on non-ESP cars, ABS requires the same signal to function correctly, and it's why your wheel is staying locked because the ABS can't function. (Reason it locks so easily in the first place is another matter - could well be knackered dampers as mentioned above?).

The problem is caused by a broken wire in the alternator wiring loom, where it passes through a connector block at the front of the gearbox. Getting to be quite a common problem on Mk4 Ibiza and Fabia TDIs now.

 

[richy1982]

What was the cause of this problem in the end?

 

[harold945]

better late then never.... it took the garage (seat dealer) 6 months to sort out!! They replace everythin to do with the brake on the left side of the car and still no change then seat international got in touch and said it was something to do with the ABS unit sending the wrong signal to the left brake.

cheers for the advice anyway guys/girls

 

[CJRamze]

Jesus Christ thats dangerous!
Especially living on the Isle of Man (Where I'll be next week )
Did they hook you up with some discount, Also where is the Seat garage on the Isle of Man, just incase my engine explodes when I'm over there!

 

[harold945]

was done under warrenty so was all good (i also wirte there curtisy car off which they were ok about ).

The seat garage is in Ramsey on Parliament square, there service is pretty good tbh.

Theres still snow on the mountain btw, but the road seem pretty dry