Brakes

[Bob]

Why hasn't there ever been a safety recall for the brakes on the Reatta and similar cars? This place does a great job to stress the importance of testing the brakes. But there are many owners out there who do not know of this site, and others who do not use the internet.

A big thanks to everyone for their efforts to help others with this potential disaster, and who influenced me to park my car until I can get it fixed and able to pass the brake test.

[Guest Greg Ross]

There was effort several years ago to establish failure modes and history of failure trends. From what I can see of Wallys progress with understanding the Teves System the problem is quite well understood.

It is called maintainenance.

These vehicles are upwards of 16 years old now, there is a simple reality that they must be maintained to perform reliably and safely.

[Bob]

Brake pads, routers and brake lines I call maintenance, and they all give warning and can be visually checked. The only way someone outside this forum knows to get this problem fixed is to have their brakes fail.

Guess I thought I had a good question, maybe I'm wrong.

[Guest Greg Ross]

A brake system is a hydraulic system that functions at very high pressures. It uses a petroleum based fluid that has to be most importantly clean. It acts as among other things a lube throughout the system and suspends contaminants. Over time it will absorb water from the atmosphere, that water disolved in Hydraulic Fluid will cause corosion internally and can also boil under the pressures encountered in service, not a good thing.

When you have a conventional brake system, just Master and slave cylinders at the four wheels there are very few moving parts so you don't have too many concerns. There probably are 50 year old cars out running the roads with lots of original brake system parts.

Our 14 + year old Reattas have ABS and lots of moving parts, pressure sensors and extra valving. I would be reasonably conifident that a 2004 Caddy 15 years from now would as well be in need of some well engineered service attention. The main purpose of Sites such as this, I think is to enable idiots such as ourselves to economically keep these vehicles serviceable and on the road.

If anything, I would consider an Owner grossly negligent if they did not have their brake system flushed and serviced, knowing what we know now. Anything, whether it be a Singer Sewing Machine or an automobile needs servicing.

I had an exchange a couple of years ago on this Site with someone that was adamant, they would not have their brakes flushed, if they worked OK today they were just fine!

Just take into account, it's not even necessarily use that degrades these systems, lack of use can perhaps be worse. Low mileage isn't necessarily superior in terms of reliability.