Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and Dead_Cats
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2012
- Messages
- 2
- Vehicle Year
- 1996
- Transmission
- Manual
First I'll start with the short version. Is there a procedure for diagnosing a bad brake master cylinder?
Now for the long version. The truck is a 1996 Ranger 2 wheel drive with the 9 inch rear drums.
Recently while doing a panic stop the brake pedal got real hard and the braking of my truck seemed to lose quite a bit of force, combined with the smell of roasting brakes. The pads and rotors are both fairly new on the front but the rear drums were getting old so I decided to check them first, and here is where the fun begins. I pulled the drums off and both just slid right off without any resistance, seemed like the adjuster weren't doing their job, the wheel cylinders didn't appear to be leaking so I put a new set of shoes and drums on the back since the old drums had already been turned once and were showing some serious rusting(big chunks falling off) on the outside. I did the usual "leave one side on for a reference" thing and got it all back together, but after a test drive the driver side tightened up a lot, so I pulled them off double checked everything readjusted it again and tried it. It worked for one trip with both rear drums getting up to about 220 degrees, but on the very next trip the passenger side was running 340 and the driver was down to 180. I loosened the adjuster on the passenger side a little, everything was in the 200 deg range on the next trip then once again I took it out and the driver side was hitting 380 degs. I checked the parking brake cables and their popping right back when it gets released, so I figure it's in the hydraulics somewhere but how do you tell if it's the master or the wheel cylinders? Is there anything else I should be looking at?
Now for the long version. The truck is a 1996 Ranger 2 wheel drive with the 9 inch rear drums.
Recently while doing a panic stop the brake pedal got real hard and the braking of my truck seemed to lose quite a bit of force, combined with the smell of roasting brakes. The pads and rotors are both fairly new on the front but the rear drums were getting old so I decided to check them first, and here is where the fun begins. I pulled the drums off and both just slid right off without any resistance, seemed like the adjuster weren't doing their job, the wheel cylinders didn't appear to be leaking so I put a new set of shoes and drums on the back since the old drums had already been turned once and were showing some serious rusting(big chunks falling off) on the outside. I did the usual "leave one side on for a reference" thing and got it all back together, but after a test drive the driver side tightened up a lot, so I pulled them off double checked everything readjusted it again and tried it. It worked for one trip with both rear drums getting up to about 220 degrees, but on the very next trip the passenger side was running 340 and the driver was down to 180. I loosened the adjuster on the passenger side a little, everything was in the 200 deg range on the next trip then once again I took it out and the driver side was hitting 380 degs. I checked the parking brake cables and their popping right back when it gets released, so I figure it's in the hydraulics somewhere but how do you tell if it's the master or the wheel cylinders? Is there anything else I should be looking at?
