A wholllle lot of brake trouble

[Crazybird]

first off hi guys i havnt posted here in a long time :P

but back to my inquiry so my brakes were starting to get shitty and squeal so we bought all new rotors, shoes, and drums for my canadian lx

so we go to do the fronts and find out that the pistons are seized so we buy new calipers.....

so we do the fronts and they work fine so we venture onto the back drums...

after wrestling with the damn drum brakes we get them on and they work but the old shoes dont seem to be worn basically at all.....

so we test drive the car and everything seems to be alright one of the fronts was sticking and we took care of it but the pedal was very very very mushy even after we bled the fronts.

next we go to the rears which when my dad was just spinning the drum the brakes would work 50% of the time which is really odd

NEXTTT i go to see if i can lock the brakes and notice that my ebrake which used to work shitty before doesnt work AT ALL!!!! which i dont know what happened because we didnt touch the cylinders

now me and my dad are wondering how to fix the ebrake we think it disconnected when we jacked up the car because we did hear a boing and is the brake system a vacuum system??? as in we have to bleed the brakes with the car running?

plz i need ur help cause i need my wheels asap

and sorry for spelling errors

[Bass Man]

Your brake are infact vacuum assisted, but if the vacuum wasn't working(or your car was off) it would make your brakes pretty hard to push down.

My word of advise is replace all your fluid by opening one bleeder at a time and let it drain out till you are satisfied it has new fluid.

If there has been any water in the line, it can cause the calipers to rust and seize, and I also believe you still have air in the lines.


As for the ebrake, I wish someone could help us both, because my passenger side works fine, but my driver side never works.

And even though your drums look good, take them down to a parts store and have them measure them for you... It should be a free servise, and you can even fo it yourself with a micrometer.

Good luck!

[Crazybird]

oh i bought new drums so its not a problem anymore the ebrake just doesnt work and the backs seem to work when they like.....

and trust me we blead the brakes alott all except back passenger.... because the bleeder umm broke off

but when the car is off the brake is firm how it used to be but when i drive the car its mushy as shit and also sometimes the brake pulsates which it has never done

[Oldblueaccord]

Well if your pretty confident that you got all the air out of the system I would first make sure your rear drum brakes shoes are adjusted correctly. The rear shoes should be as close to the drum as you can and slide the drum on. Make sure the E-brake is off while your doing this.

Try that and see what that gets you.



wp

[Crazybird]

weve done that also....and my ebrake has no function its way to easy to lift and has no effect on the brakes

[Demon1024]

if everything looks good at the brakes take off the console around the e-brake and check there for adjustments or maybe a broke cable

[Oldblueaccord]

weve done that also....and my ebrake has no function its way to easy to lift and has no effect on the brakes

Then your rear brake shoes are no where near your drums or the cables are broken.



wp

[Oldblueaccord]

Any word on this?


wp

[Bass Man]

I wondered why one rear brake would work and the other wouldn't, so I took off the drum and sure-enough, my self adjuster was stuck... I cracked it loose and adjusted it to the drum and now I have an e-brake!! Yay!

[Dr_Snooz]

Crazybird,

For the mushiness, I suspect you didn't bleed your brakes in the right order: LF -> RR -> RF -> LR. You probably have air in your lines as a result.

As for the back brakes showing no wear, I don't think I've ever worn out a set of rear brake shoes on any Honda I've owned. The best back brake peformance I ever had was on my '76 Accord. They were manually adjusted (ie: by me with a 7mm wrench under the car) and would work great for a day after I adjusted them, but never worked any other time. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

You should always adjust the e-brake after working on the brakes. Start the car and step on the brakes several times to set the "self-adjusting" (ha, ha) rear brakes. Then raise the back of the car and pull the e-brake up one notch. In the back of the e-brake console inside the car is a plastic window that hides the adjuster nuts. Tighten them until the rear brakes drag slightly. There should be no drag when the e-brake is off. If this doesn't do it, get under the car and figure out what went "boing."

It's always a good idea to do a visual inspection of everything you take apart as you do normal maintenance. You can avoid a lot of trouble by taking note of what doesn't look quite right and fixing it before it becomes a driveability issue.

Hope that helps.