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weak brake pedal

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saabmp3

saabmp3

Jedi Hopeful
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So I got my A/H running again last night, almost like a 2nd "first drive" I noticed a couple of disconcerning things that seemed to have fixed themselves this morning.

However, my brake pedal is weak; almost non existant. The first 2 or 3 inches of travel is like pushing on air. Then I get a soft pedal for maybe 1/2 inch (and I can feel the brakes being applied), then it's semi decent for the remaineder of the travel.

This really isn't acceptable to me, I'd like to have nice firm brakes. What can I do to fix this? Where should I start diagnoising this problem?

Ben
 
Bleed em, starting at the rear. Get the air out.
 
Make sure you adjust the rear brakes properly since they set the pedal. Adjust they until they lock the drim, then back off until the drum rotates freely. Once you do this bleed them RR, LR, RF, LF.
 
I did make sure to properly set the rear drums when putting the differential back together. I'll try to bleed them tonight. All of these "easy 2 person" jobs become "impossible mano" jobs it seems like.

Ben
 
Ben, I haven't followed your project, but I had a couple thoughts. When bleeding, make sure all your slave cyl. are good, any fluid near them and they could be your prob. Also front brake lines(the flexible ones) are a potenial problem, if they are old they are a good place to put some money. Good luck and let us know how you got along.
 
Now that you've bled the system and used the pedal to seat the shoes... re-check the rear brake adjustments even though you set them before. It's amazing how much additional pedal travel you can get on LBCs when the drum brakes aren't adjusted properly. Once you've reset the shoes, rebleed the system.
 
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