2001 - brakes - long pedal travel

[chasealley]

Looking for opinions on my brakes.

I've had the van 3 years and never been happy with the brake pedal. Always felt soft, and took too long to stop on the highway. After buying a new truck and driving it for the week, getting back into the van actually feels unsafe. I also tried a Buick Rendezvous and pretty much broke my neck with the great response of the brakes compared to my Windstar.

In the 3 years I've had it I've changed one front caliper (leaking), and changed the rear shoess (and turned drums). I've also changed the brake fluid (through bleeding) at least twice in that time. Brake travel hasn't seemed to change.

Any suggestions where to start? I noticed my scan tool has an option for bleeding brakes by pulsating the ABS but I don't even want to look at that. I followed the Ford procedure in the service manual when I bled mine.

Is there a particular component I should be looking at? Or do all Windstars tend to have a long brake pedal travel before they grab?

[glennet404]

Hello-

You may want to consider checking your brake booster push rod clearance. If the clearance is too great - the brake pedal will travel an excessive amount before engaging the master cylinder.

Good Luck-
Glenn

[northern piper]

Glenn raises a good point. Check that for sure. Also, as the front brakes do the majority of the braking I'd be really looking at those. As well, are your drums within spec? Having turned them they may not be doing as much as they should. You could try pulling the ebrake up "1 click" and driving for little bit. Hit the brakes. If a more solid stop I'd be checking spec on the rear end.

My 2000 has the same set up (disks front, drums rear). It stops really well and always has. Now it seems to eat rotors quickly and as a rule when I do the brakes I replace everything - I don't turn drums or rotors.

Good luck and keep up posted.

P

[Windywoes]

My '99 LX has always had way too much pedal travel-even after several brake jobs and bleedings. Now I will look into the booster rod like was suggested. Maybe that will solve the problem after all these years (almost 10). Thanks

[lord Kelvin]

The above advice is good, but I want to add that it's been my experience that excessive pedal travel is usually caused by misadjusted rear brakes.

Also, I had an issue with braking on my winnie. Specifically, the braking degraded over 6 months or so to the point I couldn't lock up the wheels, or more accurately cause the ABS to engage. After lots of debug, I discovered the rear wheel-cylinders were bad. Actually, one side of the wheel cylinder was frozen, and for whatever reason it caused excessive pedal travel. You can check for this condition by having somebody lightly press the brake pedal while you hold the brake shoes together. Both sides should move, else you have a problem.

NOTE: only take one drum off at a time when testing for this.