Brakes
Asked by Frank Oct 14, 2008 at 01:26 PM about the 1979 Toyota Corolla SR5
Question type: Maintenance & Repair
We replaced all the pads, rotors and calipers and the front passenger side keeps grabbing faster than the drivers side, causing the car to jerk to the right whenever brake. When we bleed it the pedal will always go to the floor for some reason and we only get pressure when were driving it.
(I did drive with one brake failing for a few miles because a brake hose snapped and only one brake worked)
Any ideas what could be causing the problem of un even braking?
11 Answers
1) Did you replace the calipers with new, used, or rebuilt units? 2) " When we bleed it the pedal will always go to the floor for some reason " You apparently are not trained to do brake work nor do you have a basic understanding of how it works, take it somewhere before you kill yourself ans someone else.
Theyre rebuilt. And it goes to the floor after we bleed them (hence no brake pressure) I know its supposed to go to the floor when i bleed them because we open the valve to let the brake fluid out. Could it be my proportioning valve?
Good, sounded like you were winging it and you were scaring the piss out of me... brakes are not something for people to guess at, yet too many do. Proportioning valve is not very likely... If it's going to the floor you either have air in the system or you have a leak.... You need to fix that before diagnosing anything else properly... Additionally on most systems the proportioning valve only corrects front to back bias not side to side. I'd assume this applies for a Corolla from the 70s, but I could be wrong having not dealt with one. It is possible that there is a clog but I would think that would have become apparent during the bleeding process. I would pull your calipers and make sure that neither have a frozen piston by testing them with compressed air. If you have the ability slowly increase the air pressure so that you can make sure they are engaging evenly. 'Rebuilt' is a funny word in that people seem to have varying degrees of what constitutes 'rebuilt' so you may have a frozen caliper.
The calipers have no trouble moving freely and evenly, and I got em from parts america.com. Weve bled it enough that if there was a clog it would be gone. So im still looking for a leak even though the fluid hasnt really dropped.
don't forget to check rear wheels cylinders for leaks
make sure there is no steering play and your wheel alignment & tyre pressures are to spec, i find always check the basic stuff first before trying to dive too deep into the problem.. i have been caught out like that before ; )
my alignment is pretty bad, but everything else is fine
i have tracking problems with my car when i brake cos my alignment is up the shit..
That problem is one of the things that cane b hard to check. Here are some thing that it could b . the first thing is you cane have a pine hole the lines that it does not leak out but lets air in or the master cylinder is bad it is letting brake fluid bypass..You did not say if the peddle went down when you held down and press hard before you started the car.If so check the mastercylinder.
I think you may have more than one problem. The master cylinder sounds like it may be leaking by not allowing proper pressure to each corner. The front brake system is seperate from rear brakes in most situations. You may have a caliper hose failing internally. Did you replace both hoses? The hose could be trapping pressure in the caliper and causingthat caliper to grab before the others. Good luck
This happened to my 2004 Corolla. The front passenger caliper wouldn't release. We changed the caliper twice and lubed the heck out of the hardware so the pads could slide freely. The problem was a clog in the rubber brake line that leads from the metal brake line to the caliper (it has a check valve in it). Simple, $20 part that saved me from getting rid of the car.