406oc.co.uk

the brakes on my 406 are really begining to frustrate me now, couldn't get decent feel to the brake pedal and on closer inspection noticed the flexi hoses looked quite perished so renewed those bled the sytem and it seemed worse still,i asked the question on here about that and was advised it could possibly be the master cylinder, i changed that but now have a fairly firm pedal but seems like no braking power even if i press the pedal as hard as poss it seems to come to a gentle halt , anybody got any suggestions, managed to get a haynes book for it(i know you guys dont rate them to much) and in there it says if air has got into the abs system it can only be sorted by the main dealer and if the servo needs changing its a minimum head off or at worst engine out, tbh that wouldn't make getting the car roadworthy again viable, any advice would be great (its a 1.9td)

Without searching for your old post, does the servo work? (Press foot on brake pedal, start engine - if the pedal sinks the servo is working). Is there a lot of travel in the pedal?

there is more movement in the pedal when the engine is running yes, the pedal has less travel now new master fitted but there does seem to e about 3/4" free play at the top then i need to press it about half way before anything really noticebale happens, been told the seals in the vac unit can give trouble is this true ?and are they replaceable or is it new unit?, cheers gary

I was going to say about the vac pump. Would be worth checking.

If the servo is actually working (do the brake pedal thing!!) then the pump is probably ok. I don't like your ability to push the pedal about half-way down, is that really standing on it?

i think i'll check that it looks easy enough to do ,there was one thing i found a little strange and that was when bleeding the system the nsf hardly let any fluid out, all the others were fine and pushed the old fluid out until i could see nice new clean stuff coming down the pipe, i was very careful to make sure i kept the fluid toped up, when i did the nsf i emptied the the jar that had been catching the fluid and after a good 10 or so pedal compressions the fluid in the car had hardly moved and there wasn't much in the jar, bledd nipple was open etc

yes that pressing as hard as i dare, its only the last 2" that seem to do anything, when pressing with engine of after 2 pumps the pedal is nearly at the very top and rock hard

Do the servo test, I forgot to say you need to pump it a few times to get rid of the vacuum (if any) first then put some weight on it, start the engine. If the pedal dips then the servo should be ok and we can move on.

Interesting about the nsf, it could be something to do with the bleed nipple of course, does the car pull to the osf under braking?

rite off to get dirty i'll post back on my next cup of tea stop, so about 15 mins , not noticed any pull to either side tbh

i tried the servo test and the pedal dropped about an inch or so is this about right?, re bled the nsf after fully removing the nipple and checking it it bled fine after that must admit brakes seem a lot better, then i moved on to electrical issues but i'll post those in the relavant section, thanks for the pointers today

Get a brake hose clamp, clamp it to each hose in turn, then check if the brake pedal goes harder with the clamp fitted, any brake where that happens is the one that needs attention, possibly further bleeding.

You could always talk nicely to your local mot garage and ask them to put the car in their brake test machine to check it out, i'm sure it wouldn't cost much.

well mot is due 4th april so i'll find out then fingers crossed they seem a lot better now and once they have been used a bit more again they should hopefuly bed in again as the car hasn't really been driven for nearly 6 months now apart from to the top of the lane and back, our local mot tester isn't to bad if he spots anything not quite right he'll investigate and tell you the problem rather than just saying its failed and he's flexible on re tests if time is tight

I'm sure you're right, bedding in will make a difference.