AudiAdler

Hey everyone! New to this forum and a first time Audi owner. Just bought a 2009 A3 Quattro 2.0 Turbo S-Line w/ Auto Trans & 150k miles. Awesome car, but have been having some issues within the first few hundred miles that I drove it.

I have only had this issue occur on snow/ice and am unable to repeat it on dry roads. Whenever I slide on snow either on purpose by powering into a slide in a open parking lot or if I press the brakes somewhat hard (over 60%) and cause the tires to slide, the below issue happens. Keep in mind this also happens when I power slide on snow/ice without even touching the brakes.

A notification pops up on the dash saying "BRAKE FAULT Drive to your nearest workshop", the ABS and ESP (traction control) lights both illuminate and stay lit and the red BRAKE light flashes. It will still drive fine but ABS is no longer working and if I hit the brakes hard the tires will lock up (especially noticeable in the rear) and you can physically feel in the brake pedal that the ABS is no longer engaging and pushing back on your foot, they just lock.

If I restart the car all of the lights go away. The ABS works when pressing the brakes up to about ~60% foot pressure, but once you feel the tires really slide then thats when the BRAKE FAULT codes come on and the said lights illuminate. This ONLY happens on snow/ice and has never happened on dry pavement no matter how hard I brake. I assume it may happen if I get the tires to spin on dry pavement when taking off or if I brake hard enough to really slide, but I have tried to do both and haven't experienced the problem on dry pavement.

Does this sound like an ABS pump failure or a failure from another sensor? The attached picture is after that problem occurs. Ignore the low tire pressure and high beam lights.

I want to get some input before going into the Audi dealership and having them replace the ABS module and charge me $2k!

AudiAdler

It also has larger wheels (18" Audi TTRS wheels), I don't know if that would have any effect on ABS/wheel speed sensors, but figured it would be worth noting.

FCherni

I just bought an A3 and 1 week after got exactly the same in the snow. I was not able to get that on dry roads despite driving it hard. Did you ever find out/fixed the issue? What was it?

​​​​​​​Thanks!