capmarvelous

I75eya, I was thinking about what you said and what Subaru nut said about the e brake being attached to the front calipers (I thought it was the back from other car experience). When I had squeezed on my right caliper (passenger side) about six months ago I had gotten it down half way with my pliars when I couldnt do any more I got online and found out about the rotating caliper stuff and the special tool needed. The rest of the way she went in properly, and the driver's side caliper I did all normal with the correct tool, I didnt think anymore about it because the car was braking ok. Two days ago when I was adjusting the e brake I noticed that the little bar that the cables attach to was tilted quite a bit towards the passenger side cable as if it was pulling it more. I dont know if its normal or if its a balance issue due to maybe the caliper being partly damaged (though the car brakes fine and doesnt pull to one side or the other) I am now thinking what if half of the motion of the caliper is damaged, so the first part of the caliper piston going out is ok due to being rotated in correctly when I did the brakes, but as the brakes wore down these past few months it got to the range of motion that could of been compromised by my clamping down on it and trying to push it in. Now maybe this could of affected the brake pedal eventually in a mechanism I dont know how, but made it sink to the floor and ruined by ability to brake simulating a MC going out type problem. Then maybe as I was adjusting the ebrake the constant pull on the ebrake lever and brake pedal pumping somehow got the piston to be normal again. Bleeding it earlier on I didnt see any strange behavior in the brake fluid coming out or lots of air bubbles compared to the other wheels. If this problem manifests itself again I will replace that caliper I had clamped down for half its range before using the proper tool. I am pretty sure it was the passenger side front caliper (since the rears are drums). The adjustment of the ebrake and some brake pedal pushing back and forth had fixed the sinking to the floor brake pedal problem. I think you are on to something about that caliper being damaged somehow. This would explain the messing around with the ebrake and the recovery of the brake system. The weird thing is how is the caliper compromised inside and how could it just mess up my entire braking system so that my pedal would completely sink to the floor? Needless to say I have learned a bit about the subaru braking system from you guys on this and other threads I looked up. I appreciate it. If the problem comes back I will change that caliper and let you all know if that was it. When I go back to my folks in a few weeks I will adjust the back brakes like you guys said, ie how Subaru nut suggested since its 4wd. I am just thankful the brakes are working again. It was very stressful and discouraging changing a master cylinder and then thoroughly bleeding the car twice and still having no brakes and being under time pressure since I had to leave and I didnt want to still have my folks with a nonfunctioning car (though they have another car its always good to have both working) Now I am starting to feel better, I have a working hypothesis that makes sense based on previous actions and current actions and a plan of action for the future.

I75EYA yep I was using a big plumber's wrench to try to squeeze them in couldn't figure why the first one didn't go in then got online and found out the rotate in lol. So one got squeezed a bit the other went in normal. However they were both fine after that for a good week cause I test drove it while I was at their place, car didnt pull to one side etc and they didnt complain about the spongy braking till months later. Then the question is why did it get better with the parking brake adjust, I did it where the cable tightens under the lever in the car when you pull back the plastic trim. I will adjust them like you said the next time I, its raining right now in Ft Worth and I am leaving their place today. I will do it the next time through, especially since the brakes now are pretty much ok and the parking brake lever engages ok. Thanks Subasaurus and Tom Rhere, I didnt know I could also adjust the brake pedal also from under the dash. Right now the brakes are good, could the back brakes have somehow adjusted with me constantly pulling on the emergency brake lever and pressing the pedal while I was adjusting the tension on the cables under the lever, below the plastic trim beneath it? I am just worried that the problem may come back out of the blue.

http://www.classicperform.com/TechBook/BrakeTroubleshoot.htm#spongy http://www.mbmbrakeboosters.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6:proportioning-valve-faq&catid=2:brake-boosters&Itemid=10 I did some search on that valve you mentioned, the brake proportioning valve, and it seems like it can cause the symptoms, what is strange is that an unadjusted parking brake can also cause that, I have never come across that phenomenon of a parking brake giving pedal travel to the floor. Very bizarre stuff here. Thanks for the tip. That first link has a nice list of diagnostic possibilities I found in my search. The second talks about different valves. I never realized there was that much stuff to brake systems. I always thought just MC, lines and calipers. Didnt know about all these valves etc. Just adds to the diagnostic difficulty.

Hey guys I am trying to figure this out. My folks' car is a 1992 Subaru Loyale Automatic 4wd. So they were telling me the brakes were getting more and more spongy, when I came to visit them and checked out the car the pedal would pretty much go all the way to the floor. Now I had done the front brake pads about six months before this all occured, and the calipers lookes fine when I changed the pads, the pistons went back in without any problems. The back brake shoes looked fine so I didnt bother changing them and I didnt see any wet spots around the rear cylinders. Back now to six months later and the pedal sinking to the floor. I checked the brake lines and they looked fine. I was now convinced its the master cylinder. I did some tests I saw here on the forum. I went ahead and bled the brakes first to make sure there was no air, the brakes were still spongy maybe a tad better but still going to the floor. Ok so I went to Autozone and got a remanfuactured master cylinder, about 40 dollars which included the 8 dollar core charge. Not having a tube wrench I ended up stripping one of my brake line bolts but I managed with a vice grip to get it off. Needless to say I went to Sears to get one for 10mm but ended up with a set of 5 for 35 bucks since they didnt sell individual ones, they are definitely the right tool for the job. Okay so putting the new one on I managed to strip the threads on the rebuilt master cylinder, so I ran and bought another remanufactured one and managed to get it in, but it was a b!@tch. I did bench bleed it before. Okay so went through and thoroughly bled all the brakes, no improvement. Went back bled the brakes again the next day brakes were still like crap with pedal sinking all the way down. I was at my wits end. I decided to adjust my parking brake to have some sort of good emergency brake if I needed to take it in. As I was adjusting the parking brake and following the procedure which has you pulling on brake and testing the pedal, my brakes started to firm up. I did this repeatedly and lo and behold the brakes went back to almost normal. I was reading somewhere about hill hugger assist feature on some subarus and that can be a problem with spongy brakes but I looked on youtube and it seems to be a feature only of cars with a manual transmission. There was also something online about break distribution system etc but I didnt see anything for the loyale. I also dont think it has ABS, I dont see anything there fancy except just a plain master cylinder. So my question is what is going on here, I am worried the spongy brakes may come back unexpectedly. I really want to know what the problem was. Was it the MC is it something else going on. Does this car have a HH system and brake distribution switch that could also be causing brake pedal to go to the floor? HELP!!