Brake pedal issue

[m1cR4]

Hi
hopefully someone can solve or give me some pointers
my brake pedal seems to have become unresistant until the pedal is depressed about halfway. The car has recently had new front pads, the discs are fine and the brake fluid is to the level it should be. Could anyone give me any pointers on the obvious thing to check. Could lack of rear brake shoes cause this? That is my next job
many thanks.

 

[pollyp]

I'm thinking maybe the rear brake drum self adjuster has stopped working/seized.

The self adjuster is a sort of brake shoe return stopper that's meant to ratchet itself longer after each brake application as the shoe wears thinner so that the shoes rests as close as possible to the drum.

A seized adjuster means that afew secs after you let off the brake, the faulty self adjuster that's now too short would allow the brake shoes to retract excessively away from the drum and pushing some excess brake fluid back towards the reservoir.

When you brake, the master piston needs to travel further to pump more brake fluid to the rear brakes just to move the shoes all the way back to the drum surface before braking begins

 

[Guy]

That's a good answer. The shoes were absolutely gone on mine. I got Nissan to fit my new ones when it went in for the bearing recently and the pedal feel (and braking!) is 100x better .

 

[m1cR4]

Cheers for replies, the brake shoes are def worn, i will have a look at the adjuster that interesting, are they an easy fix and easy to get hold of?

 

[Guy]

If you buy Nissan shoes, you get everything you need in the box. It's an ingenious mechanism. The bar that holds the top edges of the shoes apart is in two parts and has a ratchet mechanism on it. As the shoes wear and have to be pushed further apart to reach the drum, the ratchet will click along a tooth and hold the hold the shoes near the drum .

 

[frank]

they,re supposed to be self adjusting eh fwn, i just set them manually (before the mot lol)