My Yellow ABS and Red Brake lights came on. Can I use this method to turn the lights off?

The Red Brake light and the Yellow ABS light came on 2 days ago. But I have continued to drive the car and cannot detect any difference in the cars braking performance. I did spend a couple of hours on these forums searching the threads for clues and suggestions. I have tried all of of the suggestions, and still the lights are on, but the car seems to be fine.

Also on these forums, I found this thread which describes this method of turning the "trouble" lights out using a jumper wire and pumping the brake pedal 8 times within 5 seconds and wondered if I should use this method to try and turn the lights off.

I don't have scanguages or any type of device to read any possible codes that may be stored in the cars memory. And since the brakes seem to be fine, I was hoping to find a way to turn the lights off, and then see if they come back on later, at which time I would either get it to a dealer, or purchase a device to retrieve and read the codes.

So, do you think it is okay to use the above method to turn the lights off, and see if they come back on?

 

Thanks Patrick and the rest who replied to my question. Yes, my technical knowledge on the Prius is definitely a beginner level. We have only had the car for a few months. I have tried to spend a lot of time reading on these forums to start obtaining a "basic" knowledge of the car. And so far, we absolutely love the car.

And I certainly agree.... with all of you, that the car needs to be checked out by a dealer or a qualified Toyota/Prius shop to see for sure what is going on. Unfortunately, this is not possible right now. I didn't want to go into it when I submitted the original post, because of making the original post longer than I had already made it....

But basically...... serious health problems + cancellation of my health insurance by the insurance company = Unable to work = ZERO available funds for any repairs right now.....

All that we can do is what we have already done. Park the Prius, and drive my Ford Ranger...... which is getting about 1/2 the mileage that we get with the Prius..... In re-reading my original post, I'm sure that everybody thought that I/We are continuing to drive the Prius all over town. I have only driven it a few times, on a back-road in our neighborhood...... just to test the brakes.... No cars, people, animals....etc..... on the road..... In fact, no houses on that road.... they haven't developed that area of the housing addition so far.....

But I have driven the car on that road a couple of times....and experimented, slamming on the brakes..... backing up and slamming on the brakes..... slowly applying brakes..... etc...... and so far it has never hesitated to stop..... The only thing that I do notice, is that when hitting the brakes hard, I do not hear that "clicking" sound that I have always associated with "ABS" brakes..... So I am sure that you are right, and the car does not have the ABS function of the brakes.....

I guess I should have made my original question clearer..... In the method of turning off the brake warning lights on my dashboard...... the method that I found on these forums that involves using a jumper wire to short pins 4 to 13, and then pumping the brakes 8 times in 5 seconds, etc...... (PriusChat won't let me insert links yet) But I was under the impression that this method would only reset the warning lamps (turn them off) So I guess you are saying that this method will also lose the "history" of any codes that are in the car's memory? If so, I definitely don't want to do that.....

I thought that I could use the method to turn the lamps off..... and then if they came back on, there is definitely a problem..... but if they don't come back on, everything was fine..... but no???

There were several posts that indicated that might be true..... some suggested that sometimes these warning lights come on for "unknown reasons" ...... just a "fluke" so to speak......

So that was my thinking...... turn lights off with jumper wire method...... see if the lights come back on...... Park the car until we have some extra money to get it to the shop......

So, if anyone has any more thoughts on this last question, I would be very grateful. That question being....."Does this jumper wire/brake pumping method....... turn the warning lights off on the dashboard without erasing the internal vehicle codes?"

Thanks for everyone's help and patience with a newbie.

Danny

 

Many thanks for your response and suggestions on the brake issue Robert.

And even more thanks for the comments and insight into the medical issue..... and for the the link to DoctorYourself. With my current health condition, I am in bed half the time, so I am able to do a lot of reading & research on the internet. But I didn't know about the DoctorYourself web site. Very enlightening reading. I plan on ordering one of the books. I am considering ordering either "Doctor Yourself" or "Fire Your Doctor" as an introductory book. Any recommendation between the two?


And as for the Prius issues:

The same thoughts had run through my mind. All of those years back in the 70's & 80's when we were crisscrossing the US in my Dodge Van, making a living as a musician.... and we are still here??? Amazing!

Seriously though, I am sure that ABS and all of the new brake technology is for the better, but I have never been in an accident that was my fault, where brakes were a factor. Just lucky I guess... Still.... I'm keeping the Prius parked for now, makes the most sense..... since we do have another vehicle we can drive.....

I plan on calling a few of the Autozone's and O'reilley's and others in the area, to see if I might find someone who would pull the codes for free, or at a reasonable cost.

Checking the 12V battery has actually been on my list of things to do for the Prius. I can only get around 45mpg in town, no matter how I drive (wife only gets about 39) and I had read the posts that indicate that a weak 12V battery can cause a loss in mpg. I don't know how old the battery is, but maybe it is the original. We bought the car from a used dealer down in Texas, and the dealer claimed to not have any of the car's history. We did obtain a little bit of history on the car when I joined the Toyota web site and registered the car. But nothing about a battery change, so I guess it could be the original battery. I did download and print out several methods of self-testing the battery, so I will do that. I guess if I do find a bad battery, I will then consider "erasing the codes" after I am able to replace the battery. Or if I can find someone to pull the codes before I get a chance to check the battery, I may go ahead and erase the codes (and turn warning lights off) once I have recorded the codes that the vehicle's memory has stored now.

Thanks again!
Danny