My car has always had a fairly hard brake pedal and I am not sure why. I have pretty new pads and shoes, and I have a stock cam, no vacuum leaks, yet my brake pedal is hard. My 94 suburban, which i assume has pretty much the exact same brakes has an extremely soft pedal, in fact it takes very little effort at all to stop the truck. Could my 20 year old brake booster be worn out? Is it rebuildable? Also, My master cylinder is iron, and has surface rust all over it. I currently have an 88 GTA parts car with an aluminium master cylinder, which looks much nicer. Will this part simply swap over? Could I take the whole booster and master cylinder from that car?

 

let's just say gm made it this way. the higher effort pedal. this "so called peformance feel". i too hate it. but oh well. the booster is not rebuildable. more than likely your booster is good. then again it is 20 yrs old. you can use then one from your parts car and try it out if you wish. surface rust does not hurt the master. if you replace the master, you will have to bleed the whole system. if you do i re-did my WHOLE brake system and it brakes much better and has that stiff hard pedal. IMO, it requires to much pedal effort to stop the damn thing. it will stop pretty quick though .

 

What would cause this hard pedal effort? Would it just be the brake booster? If so I wonder if one from another car (I.E. My suburban, or possible some 80's GM Grandma car, cutlass, regal) would swap. I would think the hard pedal would either be caused by that, or by the geometry of the brake pedal assembly itself, such as a short brake pedal lever which would give you less leverage.

 

a bad or going bad brake booster would also produce the same symptoms. not sure if one of the cars listed would work but, you take a look and see for yourself if they are in fact compatible. more than likely the booster will be f-body specific.

 

I agree that an abnormally hard pedal is more likely a booster going bad or already bad, BUT don't take chances with your life or someone elses life, put in a least a reman unit as they are not that expensive. GM's performance brake package works quite well with very little extra effort when functioning correctly in my opinion. Hope this helps, Dave.

 

Before spending the money on a booster check out the rest of the system first. True a bad booster will cause a hard pedal, but a contaminated system can also. Petroleum in the brake lines can cause seals to swell and result in a stiffer pedal. If you perform all the maintance on your car you should beable to rule this out. A sticking piston in the master cylinder or caliper can also cause a hard pedal. Does the car brake in a straight line or does it pull to one side??

 

My 84 T/A has these same exact symptons. Car brakes in a straight line, and it takes an extreme amount of pressure (even for a big guy like me) to get the damn thing to stop. It happened in an instance. Went to the store, brakes were fine, got back in the car to leave, voila, hard as hell to stop, i actually tore out of the driveway of the store cause i couldn't stop it! good thing nobody was coming!

Any help? I'm think it's the booster?

 

One other thought I had. I just replaced the back wheels with Z28 wheels, and I thought maybe something got messed up when that happened? I ask because when the pedal got really hard, that was the first time i drove it since replacing the rear wheels.

Also, before starting the car, I pushed the pedal down hard. Started the car, and the pedal went nowhere, still as hard as a brick...any ideas guys?