Every time I drive my car (2002 996TT) I get a warning "PSM/ABS Failure....please drive to workshop immediately." Is this serious? The car seems fine. I dont have a local dealership. Is the car safe to drive several hundred miles to the nearest dealership? Thanks in advance.

 

First do a soft reset by disconnecting the battery for 5 minutes. See if the codes come back. Second get the codes read (they will be stored in the ECU). Probably MAF...

 

scrub your mit.

 

Oak - you really have to stay off the pipe.

 

sorry, translation clean your maf.

 

Hey spikeP, from your sig looks like you have a stock intake, right? Have you checked your brake light switch under the pedal? That's often a culprit...

 

My thoughts exactly. On my Audi it was the brake light switch under the pedal. $32 CDN for the switch and I'm good to go. The Audi forums are replete with this very issue. Anyway, hope it's as simple for you. (1/2 hour fix in the cold cold north - I know, I just did it last week ).

 

Sharkey, yes I have a stock intake. Ill go look at the brake light switch. What am I looking for? I am not mechanically inclined at all.

 

spike, it's hard to describe and I'm at home so I can't really post a pic of it but it's under the brake pedal and try this... start the car (with no codes so reset the battery etc...) and after a little while push the brake pedal. See if the PSM/ABS light comes on when you do that? Also have someone stand behind you to make sure the brake lights are indeed coming on...

 

There are several on the board that are reporting this problem. See a previous thread that I started about 3 weeks ago. I've been having this problem on and off since then. It happened again this past Friday. When it did I first thought about checking to see if the brake lights were coming on. About 3 minutes later the engine cut off and I had to restart it, which reset the PSM and ABS failure lights. When this happened before I took to the P dealer and they did not find any codes in the CPU. I'll take a look at the brake switch tomorrow as well as starting it up and depressing the brake pedal a few times to see if I can replicate the problem and if so, check to make sure that brake lights are working. Let us know if you are able to find your problem.

 

Brake lights still work (actually, I just assumed they still worked, I might be wrong about that, I never checked), but it does kick off your ABS and PSM. PITA.

Here's a graphic from my audi. Probably looks the same on the 996.

 

I had the same problem with my TT that we chased for months. Replaced the MAF(no luck), sensors (no luck) and finally replaced the front right wiring harness to the ABS sensor. It turned out that a wire was broken inside the harness! I ran the car at Bathurst race track lst week and had more than a few worried moments as the car hit 285 kph on Conrod straight before slowing to 230 going through the Chase. Before that it was constantly locking a wheel under heavy braking but after 5 runs of no problems I finally got confidence back in the car.

 

It's imprtant to note that this light is more of a "check something" light more than pin-pointing exactly what's wrong. For example if it comes on when you're braking than it's something to do with your brake light switch or lights. If it comes on when you're accelerating it could be a broken wire in the harness. Of course from what I've read it could be some air mass sensor issue. All that said; I have the some problem. It happens when I accelerate. I told the dealership guys that it's probably a broken wire but they went off and did some crazy thing with the ECU that didn't make sense and it didn't fix the problem.

 

I did some basic checking, in my case it happens when I am braking. My brake lights barely flicker, then go off when the warning is present. I have still yet to make it to a repair shop. I will keep you all posted. Thanks.

 

keep me updated. i actually have my brake sensor light on right now.