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Hey folks – I have a 2006 Camry XLE. My brakes don’t feel as ‘stiff’ as I think they should. If I pump the brakes w/Engine Off, they get stiff so I believe I do not have a power booster problem. When the car is running, they were going to the floor, even if I pumped the pedal but the car still stopped just fine. As a result, I replaced the master cylinder. Of course I bench bled the MC, bled all the brakes, also replaced all the fluid in the system. Now the brakes work and if I pump them with the car running, they do get stiff but then sink to the floor. I wouldn’t say the sink quickly but they don’t stay ‘pumped’ stiff as I would expect. Having said that, today I got up to speeds of 30 – 40 MPH and slammed on the brakes. The car stopped very quickly, I’d say within 15 yards +/- 5 yards and it stopped without going into a skid and stopped evenly so ABS is working and I feel brakes are good. My problem is I have four cars and I drive a fair number of rental cars. Every car’s brakes feel a bit differently but to me this car’s brakes shouldn’t feel as spongy as they do. Again, I bled the system, at least 3x so I’m very confident there isn’t any air in the system. Am I missing something? Maybe I should be looking for bad brake lines? I’m not losing any fluid so quite sure I don’t have a leak.
Appreciate any feedback.
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Really isn’t anything that can cause the sinking pedal other than 3 things; bad master cylinder, fluid leak, or air in the lines. It’s always possible that your new MC was bad out of the box, I’ve heard of several of those happening especially if it was a remanufactured unit. Always possible that there’s still air in there too, even though you’re sure you got it all (I speak from experience 😉 )
Since you don’t have any fluid loss your metal lines should be okay, and even the rubber lines can’t stretch enough to account for that much pedal travel. Although if you replaced the rubber hoses with braided brake hoses that would help tighten up the brake feel considerably.
Thanks for your reply. It was a brand new MC, not re manufactured, so for now I’ll assume it’s not faulty. I was thinking about the braided lines in lieu of the rubber lines as an option as well. For now however, can I ‘bench bleed’ the MC without actually removing it from the car? Seems like I could remove just one line and connect the cone & hose kit that came w/the MC and bleed it again. If I did go that route, would I need to do both lines? Honestly, the rear line was a bitch to get right and I think I may have lost enough fluid in the MC during the installation that I may have introduced air into the system but not sure. On this particular MC, the rear line is actually offset by a small number of degrees so getting that angle to sit into the female receptacle for the threads to line up was extremely difficult as I wanted to be very careful NOT to cross thread anything.
As always thanks to those of you that contribute and reply to my silly questions.
Happy Holidays everyone!
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