Brakes quit on my coming home today

[theogre5150]

I recently replaced the wheel cylinder on my front passenger side. It's been working fine. No problems today until I was coming home and I noticed that my foot was getting lower to the floor when I pressed the brake. I got about 3/4 of the way home and then there was none. Thank goodness for manual transmissions.

Opened the master cylinder and the back res was bone dry. Checked the wheel and the inside was covered in fluid. Pulled the wheel and fluid was everywhere. One side of the cylinder was dry, the other was as wet as a rainy day. The only thing that I can think of is when I put the brakes back on, I did not position them correctly. Everything seemed loose and the retainer piece for the star adjuster was not even touching it.

[kaptnkaos]

That sucks theogre5150...

Gald yer ok...
That's why I like manual trannies myself...
It ain't fun at all to not be able ta stop...
At least with a manual you can down shift and slow down enough to use yer e-brake...

KaptnKA S

[FORDification]

It's gonna be hard to give any advice with the info you gave. The wheel cylinder definitely let go, but why? Was it new or a rebuild? Did you rebuild it yourself?

When you did your brakes, did you get the drums turned? If the drums were turned past their safe limit, then the shoes would've had to travel so far outward to reach the drum that the cylinder piston could've popped out. However, a competent machinist should've been able to tell if they were too far gone to turn down again.

Otherwise, yes it's possible that your brakes weren't assembled properly, which would've had the same effect, but I kinda doubt that....especially if things were working well for a while. While they were working well, did there seem to be any pulling to one side or the other?

[theogre5150]

I may have the problem solved. Some dummy (me) put the pads on wrong. We'll find out in a minute after I put some fluid back in.

[ezernut9mm]

glad you're safe and the ride isn't mashed.

[Banjo]

ogre, you keep on and I'm not going junkyarding with you. Just kidding. You might want to consider replacing wheel cylinders as a pair, that's usually recommended.

[theogre5150]

Yeah....I have the other one hanging on my pegboard. Just haven't had the time to replace it. The brakes seemed fine today. Hopefully they will stay that way.

[theogre5150]

Ok, checked 'em out today and it's leaking again. What am I doing wrong? I replaced the wheel cylinder with a new one and also replaced the brake hose. I am going to pull the wheel again to see where it's coming from.

[FORDification]

While you've got the wheel off, take a few minutes and pull the drum and take it to a machinist, who has a special large caliper to measure the inside diameter. It's starting to sound more like the drum has been turned down past it's limit, meaning the wheel cylinder piston is popping out of the bore trying to reach out to the drum.

However, it's not entirely unlikely that you're simply experiencing what others have had to occasionally deal with...very poor quality control on replacement parts. There have been numerous horror stories posted here by folks who have gotten bad parts right from the parts store, and often have to take it back several times before they'll finally get one that works.