I need some help quick guys. I am at work right now, just went to pull back into my street parking spot, and went to press the brakes, I barely touched them and then they all of a sudden started vibrating like crazy (not pulsing, not ABS, not warped calipers- just vibrating). While the pedal was vibrating, I was unable to depress it, it was reacting as if it were to the floor already, and the car was not responding to the braking at all. I was about to hit a car in front of me, so I shifted the car into park (bad I know, but I'm not strong enough to pull the e-brake). I sat there for a few seconds (with my foot off the brake) and then the vibrating stopped. After it stopped, the brake light came on. I restarted the car, and the brake light did not come back on again.

Since the end of Dec I have had problems with the ABS, door ajar and brake light flickering in the car. The ABS is usually on, and the other two just seem to flicker at random times, but are usually on about 75% of the time. This has so far not affected the actual brakes or use of the car, and as far as we can tell, it is an electrical issue, not a mechanical one. (ie- if I use my back wiper, the brake light comes on- these should not be related!!! ) Just thought I should not leave this information out.

Also on Sunday I had to replace the brake light fuse, as it had blown (I've had a problem blowing fuses since December).

I am wondering if anyone has any ideas as to what this could be. Also is it safe for me to drive the car home (about 15 minutes), or would you recommend getting it towed? I don't have time to take it into a shop until at least Friday, and usually prefer to fix these things at home if I can anyways.

Any help at all would be appreciated guys. I am at a complete loss! oh and it's a 2000 ford focus wagon.

 

most likly a misalignment of the front brake pads and disk

 

it also sounds like maybe a short in your abs messing things up

 

it sounds like misalignment of brake pads like waldo said.

also with the fuse thing you probably have a short someplace or you have a ground problem.

hope this helps

 

Thanks for the responses so far guys.

The vibrating is not the same type of pulsating you usually get from a misalignment or warping or that sort of thing. It is a very steady vibration/shaking that lasted for about 6 seconds, and continued after I had taken my foot off of the pedal.

The fuse we thought was a ground, but we checked the 4 or so that we were told could possibly be causing this problem, and they were all fine. There was one in the read seat, one in the passenger door/foot area, one near the battery and one in the top left corner (facing the car head on). There may have been one other, I don't remember. Can you think of any other one which may cause these problems? Or with a short, do you have any advice on how to go about checking this? We haven't been focusing on it a lot since it's so cold out, but now that it's warming up, we'd like to get to the bottom of it.

We called midas when I got home (i drove it home and it braked completely fine the whole way) and the guy said that off the top of his head, his first guess would be my ABS motor. I mentioned this to a friend and he said he didn't think there was such a thing? I'm not sure, this is my first vehicle with ABS. Does this sound plausible at all? It made sense to me that it may be ABS related, since that was a similiar sound and would account for why it kept doing it after I released my foot, however the vibrating of the pedal was not the same vibrating as the ABS kicking in.

I'm not sure I'm really any closer to figuring this out than I was this morning! But hey, if I can get the ground issue fixed, even that would be nice! Any other advice?