I am the "friend" that Matt was posting for. Ryan, you hit the nail on the head. MC and a severed brake line. Replaced the MC with a used one from the 240 graveyard we happen to have on our property. Seemed to work well for about 5 days...then, almost total brake failure, again, whilst tooling home. Thankfully no trees hit this time. I had become friends with my hand-brake by that point. Decided that the issue must be that I hadn't bled the brakes after changing the MC, (I am kind of a noob at car repair). Parked the car for a couple of days and hitched a ride to work. Upon inspection of the LF caliper, determined that my line was fairly leaky (read: totally broken). With some hassle, got the line replaced and proceeded to start bleeding the system. After 5-6 times through the bleed process, it dawned on me (with the help of my friend Tim) that the MC I had just replaced was no good. Whether this was due to the fact that it was used and could have been on it's way out anyway or, was ruined because of the broken line I had just replaced, I am not sure. Anyway, I ended up pulling ANOTHER used MC off of ANOTHER 240 we have laying around and WOW...it actually worked. With no bleeding necessary since my skill of keeping the MC filled with fluid while changing it had been so finely honed. Plus, remember, I had already bled the system 5-6 times. Thankfully, all of that seems to have fixed all of the issues, including the brake failure light. On that note, the reason that I did not pay much mind to having that light being on is that I have owned a few less than pristine vehicles. Sometimes lights lie and all you can do is ignore them, (if you are of the "too lazy to fix a minor problem" ilk, like myself). Anyway, just wanted to post a response and resolution to this particular issue. Happy Volvo-ing people. Oh, and, Butch, that's just mean ;)