so i changed my brake pads about a month ago, and it took about a week for them to return to their normal stopping power. the have felt mushy for a few months now, and on the fron passenger caliper, it looks like brake fluid has been leaking, it shows on the inside of the wheel as well. Today on the interstate, in traffic, i almost ran into a few people (i was paying attention) because the brakes just felt as if they had no power whatsoever. felt like they were hot when i had barely used them. any ideas?
i have 147,000 miles on the car, and think that the original rotors are still on there. They have small cracks all around the rotor (passenger and driver side) but I am not sure as far as how that affects stuff like this. The rotors are #2 on my list and the possibly leaky caliper is #1.
the brakes feel almost like a clutch would feel if there was just that tiny bit of air in the lines to make it not "feel" just right.
Hope this explains it...
just a quick drawing in paint. the cracks arent that big. its like just cracks in the shiny part where you can see the rusted Fe under it....
yeah, especially if you never got those rotors turned when you put on the new brake pads, that would account for the poor braking, and it's gonna chew threw those pads faster too!
i have come up with these possibilities to mushyness:
leaky line = air in lines
leaky master cylinder makes brakes feel mushy like cluctch MC
Those are the only two ones. Would stainless steel lines be easy to replace on just the fronts? What about those speed bleeders or whatever those little things are that yall use and how do they work? how much? I can never bleed the clutch right....
stainless steel lines are easy to do. its okay if you only install them up front. I ran steel braided lines up front and stock rubber ones in the rear for about 6 months without any problems.
is the brake master cylinder hard to do? or should i try other things first? i was considering the vtec caliber swap up front because the rotors are cheaper and im going to be replacing them anyways so why not? and how hard is it to bleed the lines? where all do you run the brake lines?
as you can tell, i havent a clue about brake stuff
first i would try to bleed your brakes. you said those are stock rotors? i would buy new ones. new ones for my car were 36 each and at my dealership (BMW) we charge 30 to cut rotors so i would just buy new ones for 6 bucks extra. if you bleed the brakes and the pedal is still mushy look for a cracked line or something like that. if nothing than try the MC. if you buy a new one you are going to have to bench bleed it before installing also which isnt hard at all. hope this helps you out.
i was going to just order the brembo blanks from NOPI, but why are the SI's 10$ more than the vtec's? whats the process as far as bleeding goes? any tips or devices that may help?
the fact that the right front is kinda leaky leads me to believe its a line...
The seal on the piston in the caliper *might* be the culprit for the leak.
You should pull off the caliper first and inspect it. If it is leaking, you can buy a seal kit and change the seals yourself or just get some rebuilt calipers from Autozone or whatever.
what parts do i check for? the leaking appeared to be coming from the area around where you screw the line on the caliper. the funny thing is, since i changed the brakes, the brake fluid hasnt gone down much at all in the past 1.5 months. it still feels mushy though
Just look around the piston to see if there's fluid there.
Since you're seeing fluid where the line connects to the caliper, maybe the line is very very slightly loose. Try to tighten it a bit if it doesn't seem like its sealing well.
alright, ill try to tighten it the next time i do some work on the car. i should probably try to bleed it too, but i do not really want to do that. ill see if a friend at a shop can do it for free or something
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