HI
Ive had the amber light show up about 6-7 times now saying full brake control system is off.
if i turn car off and back on again it disappears.
has anyone else had this error show up.

Has anyone acutually tried their full brake control system

cheers

Were you driving in heavy rain, mine has deactivated in heavy down pours a couple of times also it's done it in fog. If the cover plate gets covered in mud, very wet or can't read ahead such as in fog the radar sensor closes the system down. Mine did in fact state that it had a total failure, that was while driving in a total drown pour flooding the road.
Over night it must have dried out and the warning went away.

its never done it whilst driving, always on starting the car.
its been bone dry when its come on, its been wet, its been sunny, foggy, all sorts of conditions.
it does say in the manual to consult dealer.

where is the sensor located.

Sounds like a dealer visit then. As far as I can tell (and after the local dealership tech who had yet to be trained on the 500x looked at my car) we came to the view that the sensor is located under the front blanking plate under the fog light. As you look at the front of the car one side of the car has the small grill the other has the plate, in my view makes the car look a bit uneven, but they must protect it in some way I suppose.
Good luck in getting it fixed.

Yeah I've had it a couple of times.

As soon as you switch the car off and on it clears?

Let us know what the dealership have to say

I'll let you all know how it goes, however anyone who has this error should raise the issue with the dealer. Maybe a recall needed.

I've had it turn off several times, in similar situations like the others above (fog, heavy rain, and once in heavy snow).

But, I also found another interesting fact. I had the system turn off EVERY TIME in one specific garage! So every time I go to this place, I park in a very small and cramped garage with a very steep ramp. The electric door closes right in front of the front bumper.

When the car electrics turn on, they do some sort of calibration. If the car is too close to an obstacle (steep ramp or garage door) then the brake control system will report a failure.

Anyone care to do some tests, please let us know if this is true for your 500x as well.


PS:
I don't mind the system turning off in bad weather conditions, it is understandable. But I think the error message should be something different, currently it makes you think like there is something wrong with the car.

The first time it happened, I stopped the car at the side of the road, got out and checked to see if there was indeed damage to the car. The front bumper was an ice lolly (also known as popsicle in Americanish).

Fully agree about the warning message, mine reported a total failure resulting in wasted time at a dealership. We presumed that as the error message went away after it must have dried out that all was ok. Activation of the system later confirmed it was ok.

I have only had the system warn me twice to brake, is that normal? Anyone know how to test it safely?

well ill speak to my dealer and pass some feedback to you guys.

i was under the impression it works like brake mitagation so if your going to hit a car or obstacle as your moving slowly , less than 25mph it brakes for you.
it also preps the brakes at higher speeds if it senses a crash situation.

if thats the case why would it turn off in bad weather.

anyway cheers for all the feedback so far

it's deffo heavy rain or the sensor area being wet

had it again on startup with heavy overnight rain.

If you want to test the system, you can raise the sensitivity of the sensors, via your uconnect screen (under settings safety). It has three levels of sensitivity, I've set it to high.

Eventually, I left the setting to high and twice already it has engaged. Once it just beeped and showed a "!BRAKE!" message on the small lcd screen. The second time it saved my a$$ by fully engaging the brakes and completely stopping the car dead in its tracks. It was a bit scary, since the braking was rather abrupt and harsh, but it potentially avoided a real crash.

My wife thought I was barking mad to have stopped like that, so it took a while to explain to her that the car can stop on its own

I consider this feature a must-have, like the ESP/ESC and ABS that are now mandatory to all European cars.

The blind spot control system is also very nice, but I think it hasn't been properly calibrated, because it unnecessarily engages during overtaking. Eventually people will ignore the warning or disable it entirely.

well i spoke to my dealer and he said "thats strange" lol
i explained the circumstances and that other members on forum are experiencing the same problem and he said he would get in touch with fiat and raise an issue. he is getting back to me.
he said that if it goes off when turning the ignition on and off again that it should be working correctly at that time.

i agree with Mr venetia Blue. its a must on all cars and therefore it should work properly. im not convinced that rain should stop it working though. whats the point in that.
maybe if everyone on here rings their dealer and stipulates the problem then fiat will issue a software upgrade or whatever it takes.

Venezia blue, do you mean you set it to NEAR as there is no High setting that i can see, just near, middle, far.

I mean "far", sorry for the mix up.

wingy999 said:

Venezia blue, do you mean you set it to NEAR as there is no High setting that i can see, just near, middle, far.

Click to expand...

After reading all your comments ,i am feeling better as i had the light come up on my dash today , We had heavy rain and lots of water on the road , One question , can one clean this sensor and where would it be on a Tipo ??

Interesting thread. Having just bought my 500x, I'm still getting to grips with some of the finer points of the system and doesn't help that I don't have the uconnect supplement which the owners manual refers to. So under safety I have brake & alert, alert and a field which shows 'off'. Does this mean that the vehicle offers additional breaking in certain circumstances? I assumed that when one of the options are selected it would show 'on' but doesn't which is a bit odd or is it that the normal function?

Apologies if this is a bit of a bozo question.