Parking Brake Failure

MrMickS

Member
Messages
3,951
Ghibli is just out of warranty so of course things start to break. Just moved it and its showing a 'parking brake failure' message and a symbol on the dash. There was a clunk when it set off, but it should just disengage when you move, and its done that before when its been left for a few days. Any ideas what it could be and how expensive its likely to be to fix?
 

conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,593
Either they welded themselves to the drums if you haven’t used it in a while or it’s rained but more likely the release motor in the boot.

Battery reset and see if you got lucky?
 

P R

Member
Messages
1,382
Mine has done this once, but was on a frosty morning. I re applied then moved and it cleared itself..

Is it releasing or is it just the light?
 

MrMickS

Member
Messages
3,951
Never bother with a manual release, just let it come off on its own. The light is on and it won't re-engage from the switch. Will probably take another look today. I have known leaving it to think about things for a while to fix things. If not then I'll do the battery reset and see what happens.
 

keith

Member
Messages
624
Battery reset seems to sort most things with these cars.
Once a year to the day I lose all audio - stereo phone park aid sat have voice, literally anything that should produce an electronic based sound. I disconnect the battery leave for a minute, reconnect and all is working again. As I say it only happens once a year to the day!!! I have the Bowers and Wilkins system and I wonder if there is some date log in a chip in the amplifier which shuts it down.
However, whilst ridiculously expensive I will be extending the warranty when my car is three years old end of July.
 

conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,593
Just had something similar on the Strad. Last autumn I was getting “gear unavailable”. It was diagnosed by one of the respected indies on here as contaminated gearbox actuator pots. That’s a drop the gearbox, remove the actuator and replace the pots plus the actuator seals. At a main dealer you would have been looking at a new actuator so a good £5k plus job. I stuck with it as I planned to drop the gearbox myself over the winter and send the actuator for repair but then I started getting a Park Off error too.

Changed the battery and no errors since.

Basically the battery was on its way out and after a restart the amps were depleted and electrical systems started failing as there was not enough charge to complete their initialisation processes.

£100 battery in the end was all I spent.

Just goes to show how power sensitive these cars are.
 

Ebenezer

Member
Messages
4,445
You should have seen the grief my car was giving me when my battery gave out as the alternator had failed - Armageddon was less apocalyptic than the messages I was receiving before the screen/dash finally went black and the car stuck in 3rd. I called it a day and resigned myself to the low loader thread!
Eb
 

P R

Member
Messages
1,382
I've said it before on the Alfa forum (they do this too). Surely its not beyond the wit of man to differentiate between what the sensor is supposed to be "sensing" and a non optimal battery??
 

MrMickS

Member
Messages
3,951
I've said it before on the Alfa forum (they do this too). Surely its not beyond the wit of man to differentiate between what the sensor is supposed to be "sensing" and a non optimal battery??

Battery sensor would seem to be the thing to have. If there's insufficient power coming from it then that should be the *only* warning that comes up.
 
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