OK, long story short I have a 1998 Civic LX 4-Door that is mostly stock. Just a daily driver really. When I bought it the guy said he just did new brakes all the way around. My second time driving it the pedal went to the floor. Had no choice but to bring it to a shop (Pro Function of course) and Mikey discovered that the rear brakes were totally ****ed. They put new shoes, hardware, drums, and one wheel cylinder on. From me hitting the pedal so hard with no fluid I blew out the master, so they put a new one in. They also found that a e-brake cable was rusted solid, so you guessed it, new one of those. The root cause of that round of **** was a loose banjo bolt on the front caliper.

The car had brakes once again, but they never felt all that great. Mikey had said I should do the fronts sooner than later. So a couple weeks ago I decided to get pads and rotors, and that's where the real trouble begins. The old pads were seized in the calipers and I had to beat them out. Once I did that I found that both calipers were blown. So I got new calipers, brackets, sliders, hardware, pads, rotors. Put all of that in and the pedal was ****. We bled the ever living **** out of the brakes to no avail. The following week we put a new master cylinder in thinking that was the problem, but no. It ended up being a busted brake line, which is what I suspected, but was hopeful that it wasn't.

This weekend we re-did all of the brake lines. Since this is a daily driver I took the cheap route. We made all new lines out of stainless steel braided teflon -3 AN line. We made up some new lines and ran them directly from the prop valve to each wheel. All of that went well, and there are no leaks anywhere, but the pedal still sucked. After hours of bleeding we found that the other wheel cylinder was leaking. This morning we went and got two brand new wheel cylinders, so for those of you keeping track the following is all brand new

Master Cylinder
Both calipers
Both caliper brackets
Both sets of sliders
Both rotors
Both sets of pads (with all of the hardware)
Both rear drums
Both rear shoes (with all of the hardware)
Both rear wheel cylinders
All of the brake lines from the prop valve to each wheel

After all of that, the pedal still goes to the floor!!! What are we missing? We gravity bled all 4 corners, we did the traditional pumping holding at all 4 corners. We ended up going through 3 big bottles of brake fluid, and were not getting any air at any corner for a good amount of time. We are confident that there is no air anywhere in the system at this point. The pedal is firm when the car is off, but I can still push it to the floor. When the car is running the pedal sucks and of course goes to the floor. I don't know what else to look at, or try. ANY help is appreciated.



Thanks,
Sean

 

Check for other leaks. If you missed a busted brake line before you might be missing another leak.

 

What is there to leak?

Sean

 

How do I know? It's a suggestion. I'm not there nor did I do the work. You have pretty much replaced the entire braking system. Either there is a leak, you didn't bleed the brakes properly or there is still something you're missing..

 

Bump! Anyone else have anything?

Sean

 

Bad MC out of the box?

Despite much bleeding, air is still trapped in system?

As mentioned, undiscovered fluid leak?

 

More than likely, there is a leak in the system. If there are no visible brake fluid try bleeding the system again. What is "traditional pumping holding at all 4 corners"? I've never heard that term before.

One other thing, did the shop BENCH BLEED the master cylinder prior to install? If you tried to bleed it after the install, there will be air in the system....GUARANTEED.

 

I wonder if you could pull the lines off the master cyclinder for the front and rear and attach a vac gauge to see which line doesn't hold? That could narrow it down...

 

you said bleeding all 4 lines but nothing about bench bleeding the master cylinder. check that.

 

Bench bleed the mc before putting it on

is teh prop valve bad rare for them to go bad but could be an issue bench bleed the MC first

 

a brake vacuum bleeder is the way to go. otherwise you and a buddy bled it like this; pump the pedal 3 times and hold, while holding the pedal down loosen 1 of the lines coming out of the master cylinder and check for bubbles. repeat until clear. do the same for the other line coming out of the master cylinder. then bled the right rear, left rear, right front, and left front...in that order.

 

if u didnt read it he took it to a shop... im pretty sure the mechanic knows how to simply bleed fluid

 

Could possibly be a bad master, anything is possible.

Could be air, but we did everything we could to get it out, and it seemed to all be out.

We did discover later that one of the new calipers had a very small leak. That leak either is very tiny, or came about later in the whole deal. On Saturday we had cleaned everything under each corner and put down clean paper towel to see if there were ANY drips. That is how we found the bad wheel cylinder. But that was the only drop we saw anywhere, and it was like that over night and we had pumped the brakes while it sat like that. Either way, that is of course getting replaced next week.


As mentioned we did end up finding a small leak. We bled the system for literally hours, and were not seeing air anymore, but who knows. I meant, pump the pedal slowly for few times then hold the pedal down while someone opens the bleeder then closes it again when the pedal falls. You know, the way everyone bled brakes for all time.

The shop bench bled the master when they installed it. I also bench bled the master when I put one on.


I don't think I have the gear to do that. I could probably get the stuff to do that though.


As I said, already did that.


Did that, prop valve could be bad I guess. I don't know how to test it, or what could even go wrong with one. More info on that would be helpful.


I have a vacuum bleeder, but its a POS. Since I bench bled the master we did not do what you mentioned. We did try "back bleeding" which is a method where you take a caliper off then slowly press the pedal to push the piston out. Once its out you push it back to try and force air backward through the master. Nothing came out when we did that.

We bled it RR, LR, RF, LF, and also RR, LF, LR, RF since I read its a cross system.


Again guys, thanks for all of the advice/ideas. Keep them coming, I want my damn car fixed this weekend!


Sean

 

Just as a confirmation this RR, LF, LR, RF is the correct bleeding order.

 

Bumping for more help!

Sean

 

Does your civic have ABS? If so the ABS pump needs to be bled also. Just a question.

 

No ABS, sorry I should have mentioned that.

Sean

 

Well just to update for anyone who is interested, they are fixed. During the week I ordered up a new OEM Honda master cylinder. I also ordered up a new brake bleeder from Phoenix Systems which is great! Friday we stopped and picked up a new caliper to replace the leaky one on the passenger side. As soon as we got out there we got the car up in the air and started warming up the garage. We started by replacing the passenger side front caliper. We checked the pads on both sides and noticed that they didn't fit all that great, so we filed the edges a little to make sure they moved freely. Then we bled the entire system again in order with the new bleeder, which worked great! We only got air from the front passenger corner which was to be expected.

I got in the car to try the brakes, and it was the same old story. So then we decided to throw in the new master. While my buddy was pulling the old one off, I bench bled the new one using the bleeder tool. Again, that thing worked perfect and made it quick and easy. We put the new master on the car, bled the system again and tried it. It was a miracle, they worked!!!! I wasn't real happy with the pedal, but we put the wheels on to take it for a test drive.

The brakes worked just fine, but I think I expected more in the way of pedal feel. That may be due to the braided lines, or it could be that its a stock civic with stock brakes, albeit ALL NEW stock brakes. Either way the car stopped better than it ever did before, and I was happy with it.


Thanks for the help guys,
Sean

 

lol, i was gonna say, I screwed around with my brakes, replaced all the pads etc only to find bad MC, glad to see your headache resolved.

 

I'm having the same problem, I have the same vehicle. Had the brakes bled and replaced the MC but hasn't resolved anything. It's still in the shop, nothing else needs replacing according to them but they're rebuilding the brake booster today. Could it be that they didn't bleed properly or maybe they've missed something like a leaky caliper or line?