racerwannabe

the auto cross we ran this past weekend had a stop box real close to the finish line.in an effort to get thru the clocks as fast as possible I over braked or pushed on the pedal much to hard..then I had 2 inches of play in the brake pedal and instant on brakes....
I changed the vacuum booster this evening,ranks right up there with doing a valve job thru the exhaust...

note to self,once the abs kicks in or the tires are sliding,,,pushing harder just breaks things....

just passing what i learned on...
Johnny

Falcon

kinda like pushing the accelerator hard to the firewall. Any further effort only bruises your foot.

racerwannabe

exactly

JerryTX

Any tips you learned doing the brake booster you care to pass along? I have a failed MC or booster, going to replace the MC first, if that doesn't fix it I have a used booster I can throw on, not looking forward to the shimmy under the dash though.. Any special wrenches or tricks or DONT DO xyz's are appreciated.

racerwannabe

universal 15 mm the top drivers side you can't see...find a small person to help....put tape in the socket to hold the nut till it's started..

what are you syptoms? hard pedal or to loose at the top ,then all of a sudden it stops??

Bill Dearborn

Actually I push harder when it goes into ABS mode. When in that mode at least one wheel doesn't have enough traction so you have to apply more force to get the remaining wheels to make up for the lack of traction/stopping grip. Always got my best stops when I hammered the brake pedal.

Bill

BEZ06

If you go to Spring Mountain and do their braking exercises on the skid pad, they tell you: "Stomp on the brake pedal as hard as you can. If you break the brakes we'll give you the car!!!"

Needless to say, all the students are pushing on the brake pedal as hard as they can, but to my knowledge nobody has ever broken the brakes.

And their cars are going through that treatment a couple days out of every week, in addition to all the normal track time they get.

In general, the brakes on our Vettes are very strong and capable of enormous amount of hard braking.

Of course they're just mechanical devices and parts wear with a lot of hard use and will break from time to time.

Bob

froggy47

Many of us use the brakes as hard as is humanly possible, especially autox if you brake too late or not hard enough. If you are doing squats at the gym on a leg day, then that's a pretty hard push. Never had an issue, not saying that yours did not fail, I guess it was just time to fail.

I have had pads go away or rotors crack, but no problem with the rest.

Vettes are built for hard braking.

Now the clutch, hydraulics, that's another story.

VetteDrmr

+1. To the OP, I think your brake booster was weak (structurally) and that pedal effort just pushed it over the edge.

Have a good one,
Mike

mountainbiker2

I do the same thing. Push harder when ABS is on.

Steve A.

racerwannabe

I agree,,,,,second time I have had that happen,,different cars but same result..