Brakes delayed failure after crossing ford

FoxEye said:
OK so the general consensus is the ford had nothing to do with it.
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Correct. The ford would be effecting it the first time you brake afterwards. Once you've dried the discs off, the brakes will be fine.

FoxEye said:
So even with ABS doing its thing ....
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Go and find an empty road/car park and have a go at testing the ABS. That way you'll learn to recognise what it feels like when it comes on.
 
Electronic brake distribution will apply braking to the wheel with the most grip but that is a different system to standard ABS.

Basically the function of ABS is to try and retain steering control by pulsing the brakes when the wheels start to lock. This worked as you were able to steer the car still.

My first two cars didn't have ABS and I can assure you that what you experienced is far better than having the wheels lock (reducing the retardation to what you experienced, or worse) AND having no steering control.
 
You drove too fast on a what looks like a very slippery road and the abs kicked in. You even claim to have made a choice and chosen a hedge over another car. Sounds like you could steer too, so it's got ABS activation written all over it.
Driver error. Learn, and be a better driver as a result. We all make mistakes. :)
 
lordrobs said:
Electronic brake distribution will apply braking to the wheel with the most grip but that is a different system to standard ABS.
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It doesn't even do that..
If it did you would end up in a spin.
EBD trys to keep you FROM spinning it by using the yaw/G sensors to compute which direction you are supposed to be going in.

This is where "racecar" ABS comes in. The bosch stuff we do at work gives you exactly what you are talking about Lordrobs, maximum braking on whichever wheel has the most grip. You have the choice of how aggressive you want it with a 9 point dial.
but with that comes the issue as above, the car is going to want to pivot around the braking wheel.
 
FoxEye said:
Either you are saying I'm lying about the whole thing, or that pushing on the brake pedal to no effect does not constitute brake failure. Let me remind you that I had successfully used the brakes to slow down all along that road for about 1 mile, including a full stop to pass oncoming traffic, and the whole road is in that condition (no better or worse). Moreover, the car in front had no problems stopping where I lost control.

I kind of wish I hand't posted the photos of the road. It is not covered in mud/leaves/loose stones, and it is not icy. It's just brown coloured. Have you not ever seen a brown coloured road? We have them down here - the colour of the chippings they use to make the surface is in fact light brown. Moreover that is the most common condition of roads in Cornwall, and I've driven on such roads almost exclusively in the 3 months I've had the car. We don't have a lot of A roads down here. If you look at the part of the road where the tyres naturally sit, it's is black(er) and merely wet.

Anyway, people will draw their own conclusions. I guess some people will say it's my fault, for whatever reason. Already had one person say it's "user error". The only thing I could have done differently is use the handbrake.
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I was replying to Diagro's ridiculous excessive reply. I totally believe you that it happened as you say it did. My point being that brakes don't just work one minute, catastrophically fail the next, then work again. It just doesn't work that way.

It's likely that for some reason the abs partially came on or malfunctioned temporarily at that point, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the car. Most likely the brakes were still a bit wet and didn't work as well as you'd hoped when you needed them.
 
As others have already said, it sounds like it was just the ABS activating. Nasty thing to experience if you weren't expecting it or not used to it - very little if anything you could have done to avoid the same outcome.

Did you press the brake pedal quite hard when it happened? Just thinking that if it was a harsh stomp on the pedals then you would have locked the wheels much more easily than you would think, activating the ABS in the process.

No one is having a go at you FoxEye by the way, everyone makes mistakes and sometimes there is nothing that you can do about it anyway! Live and learn as they say :)
 
bJN said:
No one is having a go at you FoxEye by the way, everyone makes mistakes and sometimes there is nothing that you can do about it anyway! Live and learn as they say :)
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Exactly. To learn from something you need to know why it happened in the first place. How do I know that you have no steering with the front wheels locked? Because I experienced it first hand... straight over a grass verge :o
 
Well I have tried to make contact with the dealer anyhow. When sold the car he told me it had a FSH but the last service wasn't stamped in the book. Due to needing a car that day, I went along with it. He said he'd send details of the most recent service in the post to me.

Of course this never happened. So I've mailed him to tell him the brakes failed and I had an accident, and I need to know for a fact when the last service was done.

Anyway looking at the log book there appears to be a 3 year gap where no servicing was done at all. My best guess is that the car was sat unused in someone's garage.

Also the MOT service history shows the mileometer going down 2k miles from one service to the next. Which is odd, but nobody seems to think anything dodgy happened, just an error on the paperwork...

To be frank, I made a huuuuge mistake in buying this car in the first place. The dealer was young, and just started trading. I should have got something newer, not a 53 plate. Should have spent more money too.

And to cap it off, despite being a poxy small car, I barely get 240 miles per £50 spent. Other people tell me I should be getting about 400 miles for £50.
 
Didn't we have a multi page thread on here where everyone told you buying it was a mistake and provided you with lots of links to suitable alternatives?
 
ABS is meant to stop you skidding and losing control (I.e. Allow you to steer whilst braking to avoid crashing) but it won't necessarily allow you to stop quicker. Nor will it it allow you to defeat physics.
 
[TW]Fox;27529236 said:
Didn't we have a multi page thread on here where everyone told you buying it was a mistake and provided you with lots of links to suitable alternatives?
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No, that's not the truth, is it.

You said it was a mistake to put down a deposit on a car 130 miles away. And that part is true and was a mistake.

Buying a petrol Yaris was actually one of the most popular replies to "What should I buy?"

And this car was about half the mileage and 3/4 the price of Yaris in my area at the time.

But no, it is not the case that "everyone told me not to buy this car", at all.
 
Some cars have particularly crap ABS systems, especially if its an old car. If not driven a car in some years where the pedal goes to floor when the ABS kicks in.

This guy seems to have the same experience as you. Would point to ABS kicking in on the Yaris. Go and try it on a straight road to see if thats what happened.

http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/topic/106686-braking-under-heavy-snow/

....oh and I agree the road really wasnt that bad, but sometimes it doesnt take much to upset ABS and have it kick in.

I lol'd at some of the crazy theories of some people on this thread. Water sloshing around lol.
 
FoxEye said:
No, that's not the truth, is it.

You said it was a mistake to put down a deposit on a car 130 miles away. And that part is true and was a mistake.

Buying a petrol Yaris was actually one of the most popular replies to "What should I buy?"

And this car was about half the mileage and 3/4 the price of Yaris in my area at the time.

But no, it is not the case that "everyone told me not to buy this car", at all.
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There are no real big issues with petrol yaris though. It's just that you bought a bad/possibly clocked one. Imo it wasn't the car that caused the crash though regardless of that.

i think you touched the brakes just too heavily, abs kicked in and instead of lifting off the brakes you panicked and buried the pedal instead exacerbating the problem. But I would take the car to a trusted mechanic and get them to inspect the brake system for leaks or air or bulging pipes.
 
That fact that you were able to steer the car into a hedge completely rules out skidding, you would have just gone straight into the car in front if you were.

Because it happened once and not again since means it's almost certainly electrical, so some component in the ABS system is failing, a mechanical fault isn't likely to fix itself.
 
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