Hey guys, check this thread out for a pretty serious issue i encountered with my truck the other night... it takes a couple seconds to check your truck and make sure the hose is good:
Last night I had driven about 60 miles and was just getting into town from the highway. I came up to a stop light and my brake pedal went to the floor. Pressure came back if i pumped the brakes, but something was definitely wrong, as everytime i started going again, i lost pressure. I wasn't losing any fluid at all.
Turns out one of the vacuum hoses on top of the brake booster (short 1.5" hose in between two unions) had basically fallen apart. It was a mess. The brake booster was losing vacuum 'cus of it. I taped it up with some electrical tape for the time being, then went to pep boys today and got some replacement hose. This is the second time one of those hoses has split on me, so i'm going to replace it all tonight.
Just figured this might be worth checking out, as i easily could've wrecked my truck last night (thank God I was driving it and not Rachael )
[size=75][b]"For those who have fought for it, [i][color=red]FR[/color][color=white]EE[/color][color=blue]DOM[/color][/i] has a taste that the protected will never know."
[url=http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=73349]GUIDE TO SEARCHING. [i] (Some of the forum software is different but, it has helped me a lot.)[/i][/url][/b]
[b]"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke[/b][/size]
You lost vacume to the booster and the pedal went to the floor?????
Obviously you got the problem fixed, but that just does not sound right to me. I lost vacume to the booster on my 91, body lift issues, noticed it on the "shakedown drive", and I had to two foot the brake pedal to stop from 10 MPH, at that I could still only get maybe an inch or two of pedal movement. The "booster" uses vacume to provide an assist to the brakes as disks take much more effort than a normal person is able to do. Seems to me if you lost your assist (by loosing vacume) then the brakes would work like normal but take an extreme amount of force to work (just like I had).
Not saying your wrong here, I'm just trying to figure out how loosing the assist will cause no brakes instead of really hard brakes.
Wow Jigg. Close calls like that are scary. Same thing happened to me after I body-lifted my 1989 S10. Came flying up to the stopsign and the pedal went right to the floor. That hose fell off after I started the motor apparently. e-brake saved my ass!
It's not the brake booster hose itself, but a smaller one near that hose (on top of the master cylinder). I have no idea what it does, but it was definitely the problem, i just assumed it went to the brake booster.
I think I'm going to take a look at this on the Bravada, the brakes seem a little soft sometimes.
I'm realy interested to know what that little hose does, it sure seems to me like a bad design if loss of vacume will cause no brakes at all.
I think this issue should be addressed to GM. Sure seems like lots of people could be hurt due to this little hose, it would be an easy cheap fix in a recal situation.
i agree with snowman002... i dont see how a partial or even full loss of vacuum to the booster, would cause the pedal to go to the floor....
ive never seen that cause anything other than a hard pedal.
the pedal going to the floor sounds more like a master cylinder going bad, or some kind of internal booster problem, or possibly an ABS modulator problem?
I do know that when I changed the fluid in my 92 a couple years ago it made and AMAZING difference in the feel of the brakes. On the other hand I just changed the fluid in the Bravada and it didn't make much of a difference (except peace of mind).
