Solid Brake Pedal

[jamie948]

Just jumped into my clio to go and have some fun ( not with the car but some sat night * wink wink* fun), reversed up the street, put my foot on the brake pedal to stop and nothing. The pedal wont depress and the car takes ages to stop. Its dark now so theres not much i can look at or do apart from apologise to the lucky lady i was meant to be seeing tonight.

Ironic thing is it passed its MOT today but my mate who MOT'ed it mentioned the brakes being bad, naturally i assumed he meant the brakes that i was used to using. Ive not managed to speak to him to see how bad they were when he drove the car this morning but im sure if they were as bad as they are now, it wouldn't have passed the MOT. I Cant see any fluid on the floor but if there was any i'd guess the pedal would go all the way to the floor instead of being solid.

From the symptoms, has anyone got any ideas what it could be? one of the vacuum hoses knackered or the servo perhaps?

 

[Chinaski]

Can of vimto rolled under the pedal?

 

[MicKPM]

Failed brake servo, servo vac. feed or master cylinder.... Servo or vac hose most likely causes.

Enjoy swapping it in situ cos they can be "F-U-N" (meaning Fookin Unbelievable Nightmare)

 

[jamie948]

Cheers Mick, do any of the above parts fail gradually or when they go they just fail 100%? The brakes were fine friday, just trying to figure out how 1 of the above might have failed. I had 4 new tyres yesterday to get the car through the MOT, theres no chance something could have been knocked or damaged while they were done do you think?

 

[Yosemite Sam]

My ibiza tdi (sold the hateful pile of s**t about two weeks ago) did the same.

Driving into somerfield went to brake before the speedbump and hello! Solid pedal and no brakes! lol.

Needed a new servo.

 

[jamie948]

This is not the first time ive had brake problems. In my first car ( 106 quiksilver ) the master cylinder failed, i ended up driving over a neighbours garden destroying all their roses. Had i parked a different way i wouldnt have had to stop until the end of my road and i probably would have needed another car or a house to stop!

 

[MicKPM]

Cheers Mick, do any of the above parts fail gradually or when they go they just fail 100%? The brakes were fine friday, just trying to figure out how 1 of the above might have failed. I had 4 new tyres yesterday to get the car through the MOT, theres no chance something could have been knocked or damaged while they were done do you think?

It can go either way depending on what exactly has gone wrong. I've just done a servo on a 2001 Scenic which was braking fine but was hissing. That turned out to be the main seal had partially flipped allowing air in when the pedal was pressed. If its been in to a "Garage" then anything is possible... check the brake lines for any signs of damage along with the vac line which is on the rear right of the upper inlet plenum and goes to the servo.

Mick

 

[jamie948]

Thanks Mick

 

[Derelict-UK]

This happened to mine, you would drive and randomly it would go rock hard and you would have to take 'evasive action' to avoid a collision!

I eventually narrowed it down the the brake servo pipe. Bought one from Clio Spares who were the only place to stock the right one (not bad on price either) then attempted to change it myself due to the 'easy' setting in the Haynes manual.

LOL, after about an hour of faffing about I gave up and took it to my local garage who did the hard work for a tenner.

My old servo pipe had a 1 inch hole in it! lovely.

 

[jamie948]

Mick, is this the pipe? if so, its collapsed.

 

[MicKPM]

Erm yeah, that's 100% NOT right and proberbly the cause of the solid pedal.