Strange Brakes!!!

[danielc16]

I have a slight bit of pedal travel before the brakes 'bite' - mine's always been like this even after bleeding the brakes/mc several times - I test drove another Leon and that one was sharp as anything.

I find the brakes on my Leon a bit strange anyway; sometimes they bite really well other times they seem a bit poor.

Not sure whether anybody else has experienced this strange issue that I get sometimes... occasionally the brake pedal feels very hard and seems to have a 'tapping' sensation in the pedal, not rapid like the ABS active just a tapping and a hard brake pedal - dissapears after coming off and back on again.

hi mine is the same prob on the ibiza cupra R and i just found out its the M/C so im doing it next week as im doing braidied lines and getting the brakes a nice coat of red

 

[JoeV]

this sounds interesting.

there are alot of people with a bit of movement in the pedal before it does anything. But once this slack in the pedal is taken up it brakes fine.
Would this be similair to your issue?

I have been told there is some adjustment on the pedal in this respect, could this be what they are refering to?

Mine had a faulty caliper, which i replaced but because it had lost alot of fluid i got a garage to bleed the system and fit the caliper. No i dont know what they did but the brakes barely worked foot to the floor.
So i decided to bleed all the calipers and master cylinder myself and top up the fluid, again i dont know what happened exactly, but the brakes had no travel (i.e. worked normally) but they'd stick on after a few minutes.
I then found out that they had to be pressure bled, so off to the local vw specialist who pressure bled it, no difference. they said it was a faulty servo, which i couldnt see on a car of that age. so i disconnected the brake vaccum pipes and drove home (not using the servo, bit dodgy but it wasnt far!)

This time i took it to a family friend who has a garage and he diagnosed it as the servo too, thinking it was leaking air. so we had a play around and took the master cylinder away from the servo to find that there is a screw behind it, which he said had worked its way right out. So he screwed it in, not convinced himself that it would work, but it did, many months later and no problems.

My guess is that the master cylinder tried to protect itself in some way from blowing a seal.

The screw in the master cylinder isnt used for pedal adjustment as far as i am aware

 

[welsh boy]

That's very useful to know about the screw in the master cylinder. I'm gonna ask the guys who did the brake fluid change on mine to look for that before they try fitting a new master cylinder. That brake pedal travel does not fill me with confidence...

 

[danielc16]

very good info!!!

 

[JoeV]

In my opinion, if you have a 'long pedal', then it wants pressure bleeding by someone who knows what they are doing. How ever it can be done manually if you dont have access to a pressure bleeder.

This should solve the problem if you bleed it from the 6 points. If they stick on, i would say its more likely the screw in th master cylinder.