Chris,
You definitely should not have to pump your brakes at all; they should
operate precisely and with very little pedal movement. If you have air in
the brake lines, this will give you a "mushy" feel. Is the initial movement
very loose or does it feel like you are pumping fluid, but the pressure
just isn't building up quickly? This is too obvious, but what happens if
you pull the hand brake tight? Does it still have a lot of pedal? Do you
have new pads in front? As pads wear they develop a serious "wedgie"
because the leading edge wears faster than the trailing edge. Also, the
outer radius wears faster than the inner because of the difference in rotor
surface travel along the radius, which isn't fully compensated by the
triangular shape of the pad. For these reasons, the pads need to be changed
when they are about half gone so as to, among other things, keep the pedal
travel to an acceptable level. BTW, in order to keep the rotors smooth and
even out the wear on the pads, I swap them inside/outside on each rotor
from time to time. Doing this, I've never had to re-surface my rotors.
I presume you have followed the proper procedure for bleeding the brakes.
Bleed them in the order: Right front, left front, right rear, left rear. Be
careful pouring in the brake fluid that you do not introduce bubbles. I
(almost) always work alone and when bleeding the brakes, after pumping
fluid through, I let it bleed by gravity for awhile before closing the
bleed valve. BTW, just snug up the bleed valves you don't need to torque
them down to any degree.
One other possibility is the master cylinder. Is it new or have you rebuilt
it? I had a problem I posted about a year ago that turned out to be caused
by the little one-way seal at the end of the master cylinder. If that thing
doesn't operate right it prevents the piston from returning all the way. I
had to replace the brand new one I had installed with an older one from
another cylinder I happened to have in my spares box. I guess the new one
was too fat or something. I had this problem with the clutch master, which
was a major nuisance, but with the brake master it could definitely cause
your Tiger to turn into a Ti**** (fill in the name of the car in front of you).
Quite a few Tigers, especially those that are raced, don't use boosters.
The selection of pads makes a big difference in the pedal pressure
required. Although kind of expensive, the Porterfield or Hawk carbon/Kevlar
pads work great and don't take much pedal pressure. The front pads cost
about $65 from Porterfield (800-537-6842), and are about the cheapest pads
they sell. Carbon/Kevlar linings are available for the rear shoes too. Any
of the conventional (organic) high performance pads (Metal Master, etc.)
take a lot of pedal pressure to operate.
Hope this helps some and have a great weekend,
Bob
At 06:51 PM 5/26/00 -0700, Chris Vaught wrote:
>i do not have a booster on my brakes. i thought this would even out the size
>of my right and left legs due to the clutch. the question is should i have
>to pump the brakes once for them to firm up or do i have air in the lines. i
>have bled them repeatedly but nothing seems to change. i had a lady suddenly
>stop in front of me today and my tiger had a serious urge to mate with her
>honda! so what would we have? at Tinda? i do not want to find out. please
>help.
>thanks
>chris in Hawaii
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