Daughter just put small crunch into front end of Jetta pulling into driveway - slight downhill. She claims that when she hit the brakes nothing happened and she ran over small rockery??
Brakes seem fine now. No pedal fade or other symptoms that she can reproduce. I haven't looked at car yet.
Even a remote chance that brakes can produce no stop one minute, and be fine the next? Aside from leaks at the wheels, and an empty reservoir, anyplace else I should be looking for problems?
Thanks! DS
You heard about the runaway Audi's a few years ago that no scientist could reproduce. Or the old man who stepped on the brakes and nothing happened. They worked fine for the investigators.
I have a 2003 that stops everytime. I have never read in this newsgroup that there has been any brake problems with VW's except for pads that wear out fast for aggressive city drivers.
Does your duaghter brake with the right foot or the lft foot. Some pe>Daughter just put small crunch into front end of Jetta pulling into
Jim B.
Yes -- if the parking brake is engaged or stuck, and dragging, it can overheat the rear brakes enough to boil the fluid and send your brake pedal to the floor. As soon as it cools, the brakes come back and work fine until the car is driven far enough to overheat them again. I am relating this from my own hair-raising experience.
True, but when the h brake is on there's red light flashing on the dash that says "BRAKE". I also think there's a beep too!
Blame it on the car... now that's something new?
If she slipped on "rockery" i assume the ABS kicked in and she felt nothing for that "split second." It happens with another japanese car of mine if i brake hard on small bumps.
Great, go get a Massachusetts lawyer and sue them for something you or some other stupid person was actually responsible for and drive up the cost of living and reduce the quality of life for all the rest of us. And go vote for Ted Kennedy and John Kerry and Joe Biden and Jesse Jackson amd Al Sharpton and every other pandering flaming liberal democrat while your at it who tell's you that "you have a right to stand up for your rights" and gets big campaign contributions from the trial lawyers association which is made up of the very lowest forms of life on earth. People like you just can't connect the dots and would have us all living in the jungle in Africa in a couple more years going down this road.
TL
WOW! shims not seated or unseated off the pad backings have had similar failures. floating calipers seem to just move away from the rotors, pistons inside these calipers just collapse, and scientists are baffled? or perhaps ignoring something that may have consequenses that could place unresolved blame on something or someone.it's easy to place blame on your daughter. but technicaly, it could happen.The pads also have alignment pins that keep them aligned with the caliper pistons during assembly these pins can be misaligned assembled and driven as if no problem could ever be lurking and then for what ever reason just a turn on an uphill or downhill or just rotating from fluid entering the piston bores and for an instant while the chamber is filling with one or two pumps of the pedal brakes return without a trace of a probem but maybe a couple of scratches on the pads backing.if we really want to go way out on the outer limits, assembly grease trapped inside a protective seal on the caliper mounts could heat up expand and put slight preasure on the calipers pushing the calipers away from their at rest position. by all means give praise that this incident did not claim a life. it's ever fragile the machines we trust our lives to
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