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My driver rear caliper was leaking and I tried to rebuild it but it still leaked bad, like i had to fill it every time i had to go somewhere bad. So i bought a re manufactured unit put it on and bleed the brakes using the two man approach (one person pumping the other opening and closing the valves). But to my surprise my brakes never really got any stiffer and on top of that now the e brake on that side will not engage.
So i went to the part store and picked up two 30oz bottles of brake fluid deciding i was going to bleed all four calipers.
Once done my brakes still didn’t firm up and will only stop the car if you pump them also the e brake on the diver side still wont engage. My only thought was maybe the master cylinder went out, which was odd because it worked fine before i put on the new caliper.
Back to the part store new mc bleed before install test brakes… still nothing, re-bleed still nothing, picked up a vac bleeder just to be sure and also to save my leg from any more pumping and still nothing.
There are no leaks, all brake pads are new and the fluid is all new and clear… so is the caliper i just replaced bad or would it be the brake booster??? or maybe even something else, although there isn’t much else to the brakes.
I have replaced dozens of calipers and a handful of master cylinders and have never had this much trouble.
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On some cars, if there is a leak in the master cylinder it can be sucked up into the vacuum booster… Also if you have no brakes, the seals within the master cylinder may be bad or rolled…
-Karl
the master cylinder is new just replaced it yesterday, like i said the brakes and ebrake worked just fine before i put the new caliper on but now there is like zero resistance unless you pump them 3-4 times
Ok… didn’t catch that mc replacement.
A few things come to mind…
1. Incomplete bench bleeding of the mc. Did you bench bleed it with plastic tubes until there were no bubbles?
2. Bad re manufactured mc… (it happens)
3. Incomplete bleeding of brake system/pads are not seated yet…
Karl
1. yes i did do a bench bleed and made certain there were no bubbles
2. true that’s why i was questioning the new caliper
3. i have literally pumped 30oz of brake fluid out each caliper after the mc install never allowing the reservoir to go below half full and the pads had about 1000 miles on them before i replaced the caliper so they should be seated
I worked on a Honda like this that gave me fits… it did exactly what was going on with yours….(replaced a bad caliper and the MC and I could still not get good brake pedal)…. turns out it was a rusted out brake line under the car… the leak wasn’t big (was more like a seep) and Honda had a plastic cover overtop of the brake lines and the leak was not hitting the ground…
Not saying that is your problem, particularly since you said the brakes worked fine before, but something to think about…
Also, aren’t the ebrakes on this car mechanical at the caliper? I would start there and trace back the cable…
i will definitely check the lines again for a leak
the ebrake is a cable from the handle to the caliper where it turns a small hydraulic pump inside the caliper to engage the brake, there is no binding in the cable and the arm has full travel but it seems like it just doesn’t move enough fluid to move it properly
i added a pic to show the ebrake mechanism
Ok… Not a completely related question, but just out of curiosity, are those rotors still within spec? That one in the pic looks pretty worn.. hard to tell though…
yes i just checked it and its ok… but i agree its looks very worn in the pic also thank you for all the help and ideas so far
ok so i have made some headway with this problem with the help of this video
[video]http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIQIBLGoZJ4[/video]
now my brakes firm up and feel right when the engine is off but still nearly touch the floor when the engine is running i will try to bleed again now that the peddle feels better and keep you updated with the results
Yea, it sounds like you still have some air in there. Once the air is gone, you may try the trick in the video again. One thing I will add however. When bleeding brakes try not to push the pedal all the way to the floor on older vehicles. The reason for this is that may times there is corrosion inside the master cylinder. There’s no corrosion where the seals normally operate, but when you push the pedal past the ‘normal’ length of travel, the seals can come into contact with this corroded area thus damaging the seals. If this happens, you’re going to have to replace the master cylinder in order to correct the problem.
Good luck and keep us posted.
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