Since the brake master cylinder would have to come out to remove the brake booster, we decided to replace the MC. We simply picked up a refurbished part to replace our original MC. At this point we weren’t completely sure if our spongy brakes were down to a failing MC or a failing booster, but we wanted to be sure when we put it all back together the answer was neither!
Our booster is also a refurb part. Not much to say here, both the MC and booster were OEM replacement parts.
The final piece of the puzzle is the ABS computer. For some reason Isuzu ABS computers fail very quickly. In fact, it’s somewhat rare to find a Trooper or VehiCross with functioning ABS. It’s a well known problem, but most Isuzu owners just ignore the ABS light and live without it. However if you want ABS (and we sure did), a company called Module Repair can fix your broken ABS computer for $100. We didn’t actually fix our broken module. We bought another one from a forum user and sent it to Module Repair to have them refurbish the part. Because installing the computer requires removing the pump (and therefore bleeding the brakes) we never bothered to see if the used computer worked. Module Repair sent us back the repaired part as shown. They declined to tell us exactly what they replaced, but it does at least come with a warranty.
We started the brake work with the easy stuff: pads. We yanked our calipers and were greeted with the following view on all four corners. WHOOPS. We definitely should have checked them long before they got this low. The inner pad was actually completely worn out. Fortunately, we didn’t gak the rotor. Replacing rotors is a pretty big effort as they are bolted to the back side of the wheel hub, requiring removal of the entire hub assembly.
4 comments
Maybe I skimmed it too quickly, but were the calipers in good working shape? No chance of sticky/stuck calipers?
I do find that most Japanese manufacturers (imo) undersizes brakes on their regular cars. On my old Highlander, a very quick stop from 160km/h to 0km/h would seriously put the brakes to test(did that once). I didn’t encounter adequately sized brakes until I got my Mazdaspeed3, and even then they somehow were just huge single piston sliding behemoths.
PS: With the new website format, are all the old accounts and such gone? We use this name and email format to comment now?
Calipers were fine. We cleaned the sliding pins and re-greased them when we replaced the pads, but that’s all they needed.
if the VX’s brakes were more consistent they’d be a lot better. Even with the repairs, the pedal can be a bit vague. Feels like there isn’t enough vacuum on the booster or something along those lines. Still a great rig though and the upgrades we added made a noticeable difference.
nice