how spongey do your brakes feel?

I really don't like the way my brakes feel. The pedal goes half way to the floor before they start to grab. I just bled them (again) today and it makes them no better. I have new pads/rotors up front and the backs look okay. What gives?

-Keith

mine are similar on both my xj's. I've gotten used to it. Now I don't like driving newer vehicles that have stiff pedals. Feels wierd. And my brakes work perfectly fine (found out the other day!)

Both my '88 XJ and my '88 MJ are just the opposite. Peddle feels nice and firm, there just isn't a whole lot of STOP resulting when I stomp on the peddle.

One of the guys in the NAC found that his spongy peddle was caused by the factory combination/proportioning valve.

If the pads are new it might take them a while to firm up. Also, even though the rears may look OK, don't count on the adjusters doing their job. You might try manually adjusting them and see if that brings the pedal up a little.

Also, depending on the age of the vehicle, it might be time for new front hoses. On my old 87, replacing the old and cracked hoses made quite a difference in pedal feel.

pads are about 4 months old. Maybe I'm just comparing this to my other car too much. I mean...they work fine, they just feel soft. Eh...whatever.

My '01 has always had spongey feeling brakes too. Mine has abs, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I was just getting ready to bleed the brakes to try and firm things up - sounds like I shouldn't bother.

Dave

Dave DE said:

My '01 has always had spongey feeling brakes too. Mine has abs, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I was just getting ready to bleed the brakes to try and firm things up - sounds like I shouldn't bother.

Dave

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yeah, I was all excited to get a nice feeling pedal. A little disapointed (sp) when it stayed mushy. oh well.

Matthew Currie said:

Also, even though the rears may look OK, don't count on the adjusters doing their job. You might try manually adjusting them and see if that brings the pedal up a little.

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I second this. On my '87 when I took the rear brakes apart to replace the shoes, one of the adjusters was so siezed up I had to heat it with a torch to get it apart. Check those adjusters, you can adjust them manually, or, if they're really siezed, take them out and pull apart, clean well and apply some oil to the whole assembly and some anti-sieze to the threads, re-install and check the operation of the auto-adjust feature. Once you put it all back together, go to a parking lot and back up kinda quick and put some heavy pressure on the pedal, do this a few times and the auto-adjusters should now do their job, and you should have some better pedal feel.

is there a website that explains how to adjust drum brakes? I've only worked on drums once, and it was about 3 years ago on my YJ. Totall forgotten how to do it since then, and I don't have a haynes or chilton guide.