how and can you even adjust brake pedal height? the pedal is firm but it has about an inch play. too much travel for my taste. has anyone ever doen this before? or is there something else at fault?

 

I beleive that is a fuction of the brake system. It can not be adjust but there are some issues that can lead to it.

These are some of the causes:

Leaking booster/master cylinder
Bad flex lines
Poor brake system in general (I found the pedal travel halved when I upgraded)

 

You can adjust the pedal height a little bit. What you have to do is bleed all your brakes and after you have all the air out once you start the car dont push the pedal all the way down to pump them. Use small short pumps and that should raise the pedal until the lines become firm. I did this when installing my stainless steel braided lines.

 

This is a common problem on camaro's and most non ABS GM cars of the era.
Caused by:

Air in lines-bleed thoroughly change fluid
rear brakes out of adjustment- an indication is that the E-brake doesn't work well ( they almost never work on older disk brake rear cars)
it could in an extreme case be caused by work linkage but not likely
a bad or going bad master cylinder

steel lines will most likely just firm up the pedal with a marginal effect on pedal height

 

everything has been bled and replaced with the exception of rear calipers. i do mean everything. you are correct the parking brake does not function right. i have the 89' up rear setup. the car has a firm pedal now and height is acceptable. the problem i experience now is when i drive first drive the car it brakes great, but as i keep driving i notice that the pedal has more travel in it. it takes more to stop the car the when i first take it out in the morning. my assumption is when the pads are cold everything is aok. as soon they start to heat up, they start giving me that sorry pedal feel. they also start to groan as they heat up. yes the fronts make a groaning noise and is quite annoying. are those the pads or front rotors making the noise? am i correct here? to answer your questions yes i do have those albany crappy pads from autozone. i do plan on changing them, but purchased them because i was having different brake problems that couldn't be solved. the car would eat front brake pads for breakfast, lunch, & dinner . those problems have been solved. any suggestions?comments? thanks alot for the replies guys.

 

Do you have new rotors? That groaning as the brakes are applied is the pads rapidly oscillating on and off the rotors. This happened to a 98 honda i used to have. I replaced the rotors (previous owner melted them, literally) as well as throwing on some cheap pads. Turned out the machining pattern along with the cheap pads was eoungh to cause that groan as well as loss of braking ability. Took the rotors down to be cut and threw on some genuwine honDUH pads and it solved the problem.

 

intresting. yes i replaced the front rotors and pads at the same time. i will replace the front pads again with some better quality pads and turn the rotors. i will report with results. thanks again guys.

 

I am having a similar problem with my car. I just replaced the ENTIRE brake system. I have four new calipers, four new rotors, braided lines everywhere, new master cylinder, and a new Wilwood prop. valve. My pedal seems to have about an inch of play and then the brakes take effect. One thing that's diffent from you is that mine doesn't seem to change with heat. It's always the same. There is a possibility that there still may be some air in my rear lines. If that's not the case, I've thought about changing the length of the pushrod that's in the booster assembly. But first I have to check if there's any clearance in the existing setup now. I don't want to make the pushrod longer if it's not letting the master cylinder return now.

I'll keep you posted.


Tom
tomcolt3@attbi.com