Low Brake Pedal

[douglas orr]

Hi,

All,been on a while ago,sorting out the brakes on my four wheel drive 2002 rav-4 2 litre vvti,fitted new rear handbrake shoes,and fitting kit,new rear discs,new rear calipers,rear flexi pipes,and couple of short rear copper pipes,when doing all this i had the hoses clamped,and fluid level never went low,came to check brakes and when starting engine ,and sitting still,and pushing pedal down,it went nearly to the floor,ah i said,leak or air somewhere,nothing at all,thought faulty master cyclinder or servo,but if you turn engine of,and press the pedal,you will just feel slight down on it and then hard,so the master cyclinder and servo is ok,then thought about the abs unit,so stripped it down and cleaned it out and refitted all pipes and bled again,still soft pedal,by this time i was losing it,and just to say i have ben working on cars and motorbikes for about 40 yrs now,and never had this problem.

So mot was overdue by now,and put it in ,and hey,it passed,and i said to the tester when i left car off,about the pedal and he said as long as it reads ok on the rolling road it will pass.

So hope this is of some help to any one with that trouble.

oh and by the way i had taken off the brake pedal assembly before test and moved up the rod from the servo,to try and lift the pedal up a bit,but dont do that if you have just fitted new pads all round as it tightens up and can cause the abs,light to flash on and off,and you urgently should slacken it back again,dont do this it you dont have a good bit of mechanical knowledge.

Now i only have a whine somewhere from the rear,but thats for another day.

Dougie orr.

[Conrod]

If you have a set of brake pipe clamps, you can clamp each flexible hose in turn and see if the pedal height improves. I would think clamp both front would improve the pedal.( maybe front discs and pads ), so all the brakes are then new.

Also go for another way of bleeding the brakes, use a vacuum pump type, it's a one man operation device and no need to pump the pedal.

[gjnorthall]

The important thing is that there is little movement in the pedal before going solid - with the engine off and the servo evacuated. It's quite normal for the pedal to sink quite low with the engine idling but you'll find that the pedal goes solid much further up when you're actually braking - it something that foxes a lot of people.