sjjon00S4 NJ

a few days ago I installed slotted rotors and mintex pads from AWE tuning and ever since then I have had an abnormal amount of pedal travel, well since my car is not a 2001 or newer i couldn't activate the ABS pump via the vag tool as this is a common fix on the 01 or newer models with ESP. A friend of mine who is currently going to school to be a master tech asked some of his teachers if they ever encountered this before and they did on vw/audi cars. this is how we ended up fixing it.

Since I did not disconnect any lines when putting on the rotors and pads there wasn't any air in the lines obviously but we bled each wheel just to make sure with no effect on the bad pedal travel.
To finally fix it we disconnected the plug on the bottom of the ABS pump which to access you have to unbolt the power steering pump reservoir and move it out of the way. the plug will have just two wires so this is not the large plug on top that goes to the ABS computer, all we had to do was cut two 3 foot pieces of wire and put the wire into the plug for the ABS pump and touch them to the battery to make the pump run for 10 seconds, we did this twice and bingo, the pedal was back to normal and the brakes work absolutely wonderful again! I hope this helps anyone who has the same problem.

From what I learned from talking to the techs when compressing the calipers without first loosening the bleeder screws you force the fluid back through the system opposed to out the bleeder screw as you are supposed to, this causes a back pressure through the entire system and prevents the abs pump from pulling fluid down from the reservoir, by running the pump it eleviates this pressure and sets everything back to normal.

P. Bauer

as many problems.

I think by forcing the pistons back with the cap on, caused a majority of yoru problems.

anyway, glad you got it all fixed.

sjjon00S4 NJ

yea, always seem to forget the obvious but it was too late after i realized, won't forget that again

FrozenS4

I think you meant to fire up the ABS pump not the power steering

sjjon00S4 NJ

oops, yea, typo, not thinking straight this time of night, thanks for telling me

RKA

1. People use pressure bleeders all the time, and that pressurizes the system as well. I've never heard of this problem before.

2. He did activate the ABS when doing his test drive, but no improvement.

3. How can there not be an output test for the ABS pump via the vag?? I understand that for the ESP equipped cars the procedure is well documented, and it's probably different for the 2000's, but I just can't see that they didn't allow any method to cycle the ABS pump with a vag.

WindyCityS4

Glad to hear everything is back to normal.

FASTAXI

Also pressure bleeders only use 10psi or so.