My brake pad indicator light just came on.

How do I turn off the light and what should I do about the sensor?

I just replaced the rear pads and rotors in my 06MCS. The clip and senor received a little damage when I was doing the work The sensor has fallen out of the caliper and the warning light has now turned on.

In my opinion the indicator is worthless and I won't trust it in the future. One of my rear pads was worn through and the light didn't turn on.

I know you shouldn't wait for the idiot light to turn on but to me 50,000mi seems pretty early to be replacing the brakes. If the inner and outer pads had worn evenly I probably would have had another 15,000mi.

I'm not going to put any money into replacing this worthless sensor


(what was wrong with the old noise making clips that used to be on pads?)

 

Sorry I wasn't paying attention and thought I was on the issues and problems forum

 

In order to turn off the light, you need to get a new, intact sensor, or short the two wires in the existing sensor together.

The indicator is definitely imperfect. One on the RR, other LF. If the pad that wears fastest is not on the inside of the sensored side, you'll get a false negative. Always good to inspect the brakes when rotating tires (and another good reason to rotate tires!)

Note: if you hit the ! icon in the upper right of the post, you can report it to the mods and ask that they move this to the proper forum.

 

How do I turn off the brake pad warning light without replacing the sensor?

The Pad sensor broke while I was changing the rear pads & rotors. It fell out of the new pad after a couple days and turned the lights on.

I don't want to replace the senor. It didn't come on when my pads were well past safe driving condition.

(No I wasn't waiting for the idiot light to tell me to fix my brakes.)

 

The sensor is just a piece of wire mounted in plastic, once the wire wears through (when the brake pads wear out) or the wire breaks the light comes on. There is no way to turn off the light without closing the now open circuit (fix/replace the broken wire). As Eric stated you can replace the sensor or short the the wires together. On my car, I cut off the plastic part of the sensor and soldered the two wires together. I then just tie-wrapped the wires out of the way. The wires are a little bit of a pain to solder.

You might be able to find a used sensor in the NAM marketplace.

 

Just short out the wire (tie the ends together). Voila, you're done.

 

Sweet.
I was worried it was more complex then that.

 

All my 3 cars have brake pad wear sensors and I've found them to be useless. Mod the wires to circumvent the sensors. My tires are rotated every 5k so I check the pads often enough.

 

Two identical threads merged/moved. PLEASE do not cross-post, folks...it just creates more work.

 

Since your light came on after the pads were replaced and you said the sensor fall out of the pads, you should check to see where the wire is actually broken because it might not be at the normal pad sensor, wire wear location. Maybe the sensor lead wire broke somewhere along the wire when it fell out.

I suggest you look at the sensor to verify that the wire is broken at the normal wear location because maybe it is now broken somewhere else. You should see the silver wire in the plastic sensor, if it is not wore through/broken then the lead wire is probably broken somewhere else and will need to be repaired at that breakage location. You can test by taking a wire or something conductive and shorting across the bare sensor wire. The light should go out when you close (complete) the circiut. If the light does not go out that would be an indication that there is a break somewhere else along the lead wire and you will have to visually inspect the wire to see if you can find a damaged area where it looks like the wire broke.

 

You could simply do it right and replace the sensor. It's not that big of deal.