Scary experience
 

Following a misfire code I thought I'd give the old girl (2001 V6) a thrash to see if it would clear.
Went to a quiet road nearby with about a mile of straight between two mini roundabouts - took it up to nearly 5K revs both ways doing heavy braking, obviously, before entering the roundabouts
Strong smell of brake pads! and in about half a mile, attempting a slowdown for a left turn, the brake pedal went straight to the floor!! Overshot the turn and slowed using the Hand brake.
After letting things cool for a about 5 minutes and checking for obvious fluid leaks, It was possible to get a bit of pedal travel by pumping it, then I limped home.
Once cool, brake pedal has improved but is spongy so it looks like a case of brake fluid boil.
I Don't know when the fluid was last changed, I've only had the car 9 months but It is definately getting done before the cars next outing.
There is nothing quite so alarming as a brake pedal going right to the floor and sailing straight on! So my strong advice is DO NOT IGNORE REGULAR BRAKE FLUID CHANGES.
Oh and the misfire "fix" didn't work so a new coil has been ordered :cool:

Brake fail can be scary. I am assuming you have an auto, can't you force them to change down........ rapidly?

macafee2

you were very lucky, I had a rear wheel come off, it bounced on the roof, jumped over a police car coming towards me and finished up 100 yds away, the remainder of me and the car shot behind the police car and the one following it and climbed a steep grass bank before coming to a shuddering halt. the kindly coppers switched the engine off as I sat behind the wheel quivering like a jelly. they retrieved the wheel complete with brake drum and helped me refit it and get back on the road. this was 1965 I dont think I would be so lucky now. Incidentally this taught me never re use split pins.

Luckily it was an uphill turn so only doing about 15 mph and by the time I reacted to no brakes I had overshot - handbrake is a drum on our cars so was able to come to rest.
It is an auto and if I had been travelling faster would have tried to come down the box but in a close traffic stop that would be heart stopping

'There is nothing quite so alarming as a brake pedal going right to the floor and sailing straight on!'

LOL

And then some!!

Glad you're ok ����

I bet even though your brakes failed there were still skid marks :getmecoat:

Had brake failure a couple of times, once many years ago with my Singer Gazelle, not long after I'd bought it. Had gone to check the brake fluid but couldn't get the top off the reservoir, so thought I'd look at it the next day, went out a while later and went to stop and pedal went down to the floor and just about stopped on the last inch of pedal travel.

The other failure was on my dad's old Volvo 740, had done about 140 mile trip up the motorway, not been off it long, came up to a roundabout and pedal to the floor *eek*, luckily it was a manual so able to continue the last couple of miles to my destination by gear changing and handbrake only. Fluid level was OK so I can only assume that it was overheated brake fluid. After cooling down and pumping the brakes a number of times, brakes came back.

This was not on a 75, I had a used Peugeot 508 a few years back and in the main dealer service history it was supposed to have had included a brake fluid change a few months before I bought it. On getting the car home I checked the boiling point of the fluid in the master cylinder, it was low enough to prove to me it had not been changed recently. I repeated the same check at the wheels - exactly the same.

Fast forward to earlier this year, I had another car main dealer serviced and a brake fluid change. Exactly the same story. Who can you trust?

I use a refractometer which I checked the calibration of both times with fresh fluid.

I had this,funnily enough on the car I had before my 740 (which had amazing brakes lol). Down a slip road from a motorway, on the way to cinema on a first date with a girl . Turned out to be the slave at the drum had leaked under pressure (I was not braking hard either, it was a first date).

I had started to brake gently, as we went down the slip road, and thought the pedal travel felt odd, with no slowing effect at all. Pressed harder, and foot went to the floor, with the braking effort I expected earlier. It did stop between the foot brake, gears and hand brake.

Driver around the roundabout gingerly, but full braking had returned. Got fluid at a nearby garage but fluid was just marker width below the full line.

The movie was silly funny,but it was her choice, the water boy, so it was either me or the brake failure that resulted in no second date lol.

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