Brake sensors - ebay

[Franknstein]

Hi All
I've had lots of issues with the brake pad warning light always coming up.
Decided to replace both sensors as all the pads are almost new.
I bought a pair off ebay to try save a penny, and installed them, problem went away for a while but now its back.
Seems pretty mad to me that I am getting the error, even the ones I pulled off the car looked perfect, they weren't worn through or anything....

What gives? I mean, all it is is a switch to close the circuit, no resistor inside or anything surely?

Can anyone please shed some light on the matter?

I did the thing where you have to open the door for 20 seconds to reset it and whatnot..

[X5Sport]

Checked the wiring for a short?  Might be a wiring issue rather than a sensor fault.  Might also be a cheapo sensor issue, but they may not be the cause.

Richard

[Franknstein]

Thanks Richard...
But surely if the wire was shorted it would not cause the issue... I mean the whole idea of the sensor is to close the circuit no?

Or do you mean a short to earth?

Whats a good way to test this with a multimeter....?

[X5Sport]

Try checking that only one side goes to ground, or none at all.  I can't remember if the wear sensor is 'open' to start with, or 'closed'.

Flexing the wire to see if anything changes as the wire is manipulated would be what I would try.

R

[shadrack]

[quote="X5Sport"]
Try checking that only one side goes to ground, or none at all.  I can't remember if the wear sensor is 'open' to start with, or 'closed'.

Flexing the wire to see if anything changes as the wire is manipulated would be what I would try.

R
[/quote]

i think there closed to start with, then as it wears down through the wire it opens the ciruit (mite be wrong tho)

[scratchpole]

I have exactly the same problem and also bought some ebay replacements that have not fixed it.

The ones I removed appeared OK so I am not sure if that is the problem. I did read somewhere where someone cut the cable (very) short and soldered the ends of the wires together so that they never needed to worry about  the warning light so I thought it might be an idea to do this to create a test wire.

At present the warning lamp does not come on and stay on but rather will light at random times (such as traveling on a straight road without braking) and then go out. My thinking is that I fit my "tester" in place of one sensor to see if that solves the problem, and if not then do this on the other one I may find which one is (perhaps) faulty.

Any one have any other ideas?