Brake Problems

Ever since I've replaced my front brake pads, I've been having trouble with an extremely soft pedal. I got my car back from the shop and after driving other vehicles for so long, I was reminded of how soft the pedal exactly is in my legacy now. I have to put a lot of effort into stopping the car, which has forced me to drive a lot slower than usual. The vehicle has ABS, and I've bled the front lines. There is sufficient brake fluid in the master cylinder. I've tried pumping the brakes both fast and by holding in for 7 seconds, out 7 seconds, in 7 seconds, and so on. I can't get them to work the way they were before I installed the new pads. When the car is off, I can pump the brake pedal once and it returns to and exteremly stiff pedal, but goes soft again when the car is started. Could someone throw out some ideas on what might be wrong? I don't have the money to take it to Subaru to have them go through replacing random parts until they work right.

Edit: Something that might be worth including...When I was driving in the rain Friday night I had to really get on the brakes and they locked up and I started skidding. I didn't think that was supposed to happen with ABS.

Edit 2: It was wet friday night, so that added to the skidding, but once again, I don't think it should've locked up.

It usually is wet when it is raining out, right?
ABS shouldn't allow you to lock up, but you can make it lock up under the right conditions.

Did you compare the pad thickness on the replacement pads to the pads you took out the car?
I am assuming you set the right brake gap.
Did you use the right grade of brake fluid when you bled the lines?

Ray, I've started doing some research on breaking in brakes and such. I haven't done it yet, so the brakes aren't seated apparently. Tomorrow I'll go out to the state forest and see if I can get them to seat on the rotors. If not, I'll have the rotors turned so that everything's flat and the pads won't have such a hard time seating. I've also started reading my Haynes Manual and the Legacys (not sure about other Scoobs) have a braking compensator that will start braking with the rear brakes if the event that the front brakes don't stop you under hard braking. I think that's probably why they locked up. Hopefully I can get the pads seated correctly and get my stopping distance back. Until then, I'll be allowing myself plenty of extra time to get places and make sure I have plenty of distance to stop in case of an emergency. I'll check back tomorrow after I try to seat the pads.

Edit: The old pads were about half the thickness of the new pads. I am using Bendix brakes, which I was told is the OEM parts by the people down at Advanced Auto. The gap between the rotor and the pad is exteremly close. If it's not that the pads are not seated, it may be that the caliper piston is seized or something. :dunno:

Well, I guess I should've researched a little better before posting. The braking problems seems to be fixed now. Before I went out I put the front tires in the air and made sure the calipers weren't seized. They weren't, so I went ahead and started seating that pads. It worked. I got up to 30mph and then put on the brakes down to 5mph, starting of by just putting light pressure on the pedal, and increasing the pressure bit by bit every time I went to stop again. It now takes a lot less effort to stop the car.

So, now I feel stupid :loser: :lol: