ABS Light, Burning Smell, Smoke Show (1 Viewer)

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Sep 20, 2019
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Location
Colorado
So for a bit of context before getting into this - yes I've been digging through old threads and Google searching but I haven't found anything on what I experienced yesterday. Vehicle is a 1997 LX450 with nearly 186,000 miles on it.

If it's pertinent - The knuckles were fully serviced at the beginning of this past August, I want to say that was about 1500-2000 miles ago. While I was in there, I put on new rotors and 100 series pads. Since then I have not noticed any abnormal braking behavior - no pulling to either side or ABS engaging when inappropriate.

Anyway, yesterday morning I fired up the rig as normal and started driving, while the engine was still cold the ABS light came on and remained on solid. I didn't notice anything weird about the braking so I continued to drive. Then came the smell.... I couldn't place it. Somewhere between burning brakes/friction material and electronics. Maybe it's just how these pads smell? At this point I probably should have stopped but I was determined to reach my destination so I pushed onward. While on the highway, my passenger noticed that there was smoke coming from under the backseat. Weird. So I pulled over at the next opportunity and walked around and sure enough, faint wisps of smoke were coming from somewhere under the truck but I couldn't pinpoint it. Poked my finger at the rotors and all of them were pretty hot.

My current game plan is to crawl under the LX tonight and check the ABS sensors and maybe use the FSM to pull the ABS code. Probably makes sense to check for a stuck caliper and abnormal wear while I'm at it. I checked the fluid - it's too full, presumably from the new pads. Going to siphon some out and see if that helps.

Has anyone else experienced this? What else should I be looking for? Beyond the easy things to check I'm not sure where to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Edit: A few photos of the brake fluid level before and after extracting a little. Am I due for a flush?

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