So I decided to clean my coolant reservoir on my 2001. When trying to remove the bolt of the battery/reservoir holder bar, the head of the bolt snapped
. Since I have somewhat of a rust issue the tapout did not help to extract the remaining bolt. I decided to drill it out and put a helicoil.
When drilling I accidentally went too deep and punctured the wiring harness directly underneath.
. When I started the car the VSC, ABS, VSC OFF, e-brake warning lights were on. I immediately realized that something got shorted (I thought I fried the ABS ECU). Nevertheless the car started and was driveable so I decided to head home (I was only 4 miles away). About one minute into the drive a loud, continuous alarm started emitting from the dash. I still continued driving. About 200 feet before I reached home my brakes failed
. I lost power to the front brakes and was relying on the rear drums only.
Luckily I made home safe.
First I was sure that I lost my entire (and very expensive) ABS/Brake unit, however after some pondering I checked the fusebox and noticed 2 blown fuses: 60 Amp ABS 1 and 40 Amp ABS 2. The latter was just a pull to remove, however removing the 60 amp fuse requires its own write-up. Long story short, you have to take apart the whole box and unbolt it from underneath.
After replacing the fuses, everything seems to be back to normal. Warning lights are off and no beep. I haven't taken the car out on the street yet, but brakes seem fine around the parking garage.
So my concern is, how can a broken fuse lead to a brake failure? Is this a design flaw? Has anyone experienced this?