jamesinc
Interesting thing happened last night, on the way home Nina's 244 after coasting down Balaclava Road I notice the pedal is more spongy than I expect, and after a few presses the brake failure light illuminates. Weirdly there's no fluid loss as far as I can see in the reservoir, and this fluid has been in the car for 18 months. The master was replaced 18 months ago with a new one.
Vee_Que
It's not uncommon for the block to gain am issue. Otherwise, the fluid has boiled, 18 months is a relatively long time for brake fluid.
AshDVS
Distribution block maybe?
jamesinc
Hmm so first port of call is a bleed then I suppose. Ugh I hate bleeding 240 brakes so god-damn much
jamesinc
@Vee_Que I will add, the brakes were totally fine, we cruised home with no traffic, so very little braking, and the suddenly one block from home I press the pedal and it's soft. Boiled fluid I would expect to notice under different circumstances.
AshDVS
Check to see if there is even a damp ring around where the white electrical connector/bung goes into the distribution block as your first port of call.
jamesinc
@AshDVS what if there is?
AshDVS
Replace the sensor and o ring (or maybe just the o ring), replace the distribution block itself.
I changed to the later style on my 240 as I had a couple of these fail.
Philia_Bear
The distro block is well known to fail
jamesinc
@AshDVS with the later style, where does the brake failure light sensor go? Is it in the reservoir?
AshDVS
Its in the reservoir in late ones.
I killed four of them before switching to the late style block.
My use case was a little unique - extreme use, huge pedal pressure and then months on end of sitting and not being used - none of that helps with the longevity of these sorts of things.
jamesinc
Well, I mean, the one that's in there is probably the original block from 1981.
Anyway I degreased the whole area. It's raining right now so everything is taking its sweet time drying off. Once its dry I'll check. I took it up and down the street and brakes seemed to be functioning fine, so maybe it is just the junction block.
I have a later-style block in my parts stash somewhere because y'all warned me they were prone to failure back when the master died, though my first preference would be to replace it with a new block with sensor.
jamesinc
Update: disassembled the distribution block and cleaned it and bled the system, all issues resolved.
carnut1100
I've had the block die too...but I've always swapped on a spare one rather than try to fix it.
Ended up replacing almost every component in the GT brakes over a few months....had a run of stuff go bad from the master to calipers sticking to rotors needing replacement to the distro block and even a hard line sprung a leak!
Brakes were great afterwards!
jamesinc
I don't know why it went. The sensor was fine, it was just the piston was stuck to one end. I thought if I opened one circuit and stomped the pedal a few times it would dislodge it, but no dice, so I tore it down and reset it by hand.
jamesinc
Driving this weekend, the brake light would flicker above 80km/h. Very weird.
