Golden Helmet
Full Access Member
Heya fellas. Today's victim is the brakes, I had the bright idea to replace the front calipers and all the rubber brake hoses since everything is 24 years / 300k miles old. Everything was working just fine, but with hydroboost on the horizon I thought it'd be smart to make sure everything else in the system is fresh. In doing so, I completely ignored rule #1, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and now I know never to do that again.
Anyways. To keep it short, we put the calipers and hoses on, adjusted the rear brakes (I never ever adjust them, they've always worked fine), and then bled the #^&* out of the system, and we just could not get the pedal to feel like it did with the old parts. The pedal has virtually no resistance for the first ~75% of its travel (usually I start to get a great pedal feel at about 50% pedal travel), and now I have a sinking brake pedal. The truck stops pretty good, but the pedal feels like crap. My mechanic was convinced that it was my master cylinder (which was replaced 3 years ago), so we even tried a new master cylinder and it made no difference. We put the old one back on, and that's where it stands now.
I'm convinced that there is still air in the system, but the mechanic disagrees since we're not seeing any bubbles coming out of the bleeders. Tomorrow he's gonna bleed the system yet again, and if it still doesn't behave he's gonna play with the master cylinder rod (or vacuum booster rod?) and see if that gets some pedal back. In the mean time, if any of you guys have some thoughts I'd love to hear them, if it's not air in the system then I'm all out of ideas.
This is what I get for trying to get ahead. I could have just kept on ignoring the factory original rubber brake hoses, but noooo, I wanted to fix it before it broke. No good deed goes un-punished with this truck, I swear
Anyways. To keep it short, we put the calipers and hoses on, adjusted the rear brakes (I never ever adjust them, they've always worked fine), and then bled the #^&* out of the system, and we just could not get the pedal to feel like it did with the old parts. The pedal has virtually no resistance for the first ~75% of its travel (usually I start to get a great pedal feel at about 50% pedal travel), and now I have a sinking brake pedal. The truck stops pretty good, but the pedal feels like crap. My mechanic was convinced that it was my master cylinder (which was replaced 3 years ago), so we even tried a new master cylinder and it made no difference. We put the old one back on, and that's where it stands now.
I'm convinced that there is still air in the system, but the mechanic disagrees since we're not seeing any bubbles coming out of the bleeders. Tomorrow he's gonna bleed the system yet again, and if it still doesn't behave he's gonna play with the master cylinder rod (or vacuum booster rod?) and see if that gets some pedal back. In the mean time, if any of you guys have some thoughts I'd love to hear them, if it's not air in the system then I'm all out of ideas.
This is what I get for trying to get ahead. I could have just kept on ignoring the factory original rubber brake hoses, but noooo, I wanted to fix it before it broke. No good deed goes un-punished with this truck, I swear