Well that was exciting (No brakes!)

Driving into work this morning I was coming to a stop and hit some packed snow and slid a bit. ABS goes nuts then the pedal nearly goes to the floor, ABS continues to go nuts, brake light comes on. Crap...

Stopped at the autoparts store a little further down the road and pop open the hood. Master cylinder reservoir is basically empty. Double crap.

Buy a quart of Dot 3 fill the thing up and limp it a few miles back home with minimal brakes, reservoir is getting close to empty again.

I guess I'm laying on my freezing concrete garage floor tonight to figure out which brake hose ruptured. Not that I can get parts for a few days anyway if its the rears because no one has them in stock except RockAuto.

Sad thing is I've been driving for 17 years and this is the 3rd time this has happened to me. The most exciting was when my 4Runner had the friction material of a brake shoe come loose driving down Clyde Morris Blvd into the Nova Rd intersection in Daytona Beach in the middle of the day.

Second most exciting was when I was pulling an airplane out a hangar and the brakes failed on the tug...

Best no-brake incident I had was in a GMT-400 coming down a steep rocky hill with over a cord of fresh-cut white oak firewood (seriously heavy E36 M3, for those not in the know). How I got down that hill and got home without blowing a stop sign or killing myself, I'll never know.

I had the right brake fail on my long cross-country when I was getting my license, which was also at a particularly frigid moment in time (I flew over CT/MA/NH/VT/NY). Thankfully none of the runways were too short; I did have to make several left 270-degree turns onto taxiways.

When I was burying FIOS cable, our work truck was a 1993 ford 14 ft Uhaul truck, that we towed a diesel powered air compressor with. I brought it home one night after losing the brakes on the highway, and told the boss I wasn't driving it again until it got new brakes. The next morning, he actually came out with us, and drove. All day insisting the brakes were fine and the metal on metal sound we were hearing from the front wheels was just our imagination. Finally, coming down a nice steep slope into a busy intersection at rush hour, we lost what little stopping power we had, and had to rely on the horn to get us the rest of the way home. I still can't believe we made it the 20 miles back without wrecking. $3500 worth of brake and suspension hardware and labor later, doubling the cost of the truck, it was actually safe to drive again. 

Not to be out done, a month later he rolled the brand new backhoe he bought from his FIL dealership. Day 2 of ownership, I'd been warning him from the time he took delivery the ramps on the trailer were too short and making the backhoe too uneven to load. So what does he do? Parks the truck and trailer on a hill, nose of the truck uphill. Got the backhoe off, dug the trench, and then for whatever reason he still had the bucket and arm raised as high as he could, he drove up the too short ramps up hill and promptly rolled it right over backwards. Maybe "I told you so" wasn't the most appropriate response, but it was the most deserved. 

So it's turned into one of those type of threads... okay.

I went through some water and got the brakes good and wet. That wasn't a big deal within itself, but the psychological part of it was a trip. The sequence of events goes something like this:

1. Brain says to apply brakes.

2. Foot steps on pedal.

3. Upper body muscles tighten unconsciously to counter anticipated deceleration.

4. Deceleration doesn't happen.

5. As a result of no deceleration, upper body muscles push upper body aft.

6. Brain, sensing upper body moving aft, interprets this as acceleration.

7. End result, it felt exactly like I'd stepped on the gas by accident, but hadn't.

Like I said, pretty trippy.

Bonus feature:

One time I was sitting in a parking lot and had both cars on each side of me start backing out at the same time. Right then, a car was pulling into the slot facing me. End result felt *exactly* like my car was rolling forward uncontrollably - again, pretty trippy.

3 years later, I still feel very lucky about when and where my brakes failed.  We had just arrived at the security shed at the entrance to Pitt Race (or Beaver Run, or Pittsburg International Race or whatever they are called these days) in the Expedition with the whole family (including the dog) and a buddy after towing the 24' race car trailer from Ann Arbor.  While signing the waiver, my foot went to the floor on the brake.  Uh oh.  Took a luck under the truck, and there was a puddle under the master cylinder area.  Well, the track is on the top of a pretty steep hill, so  I decided to leave the trailer hooked up since it had electric brakes, and between that and the parking brake made it to the hotel.  If I had needed to do a panic braking event anywhere else on the trip, the failure could have been much more disastrous. 

We ended up nursing it to the local Ford dealer the next morning.  When I told my story and asked 'what are the chances you can get this fixed before you close at 3 tomorrow afternoon' the guy's response still makes me smile when I tell the story.  He said, "Sounds like I have to."  And he did.  

Got home, inspected the underside of the truck, and ended up getting a newer one.

I've never had a full brake failure before, only drove home from the track on squishy boiled brakes once. Although I did drive my Samurai with no hydraulic brakes a couple of times. I just took it slow and left as much room as possible in front. It was the only time I've driven at the same speed as traffic around here. Only had 1 panic stop among the 2 trips.

I was towing the lemons car with the Caprice through town the year before last and heard that distinctive pop, along with the pedal going to the floor. The front brakes immediately locked up, which did little to slow me down considering the long rear overhang and relatively large tongue weight. Pushed the front wheels right through an intersection at about 15 mph. The fronts were enough for 'normal driving' deceleration, but not when the light turns red at that worst possible moment.

That was the day I found the shortcoming of surge brakes on a trailer - at least with electric brakes, I still would have been able to use the trailer brakes to slow me down. I couldn't generate enough deceleration with the skidding front wheels to really get the surge brakes to work.

Only happened to me once.  I had a 2500 Sub as my race car tow vehicle. I was just arriving at Grattan Raceway Friday afternoon for a weekend race and went to slow the tow rig and trailer  down to turn into the tracks entrance and the pedal went to the floor! All I had was the electric brakes on the trailer.  I checked the system and found no leaks but I didn't look hard enough.  I went into town and got a replacement master and of course that didn't fix the problem. 

I then found the rusted out line to the rear.  I bent the line over and crimped it a couple of times and refilled the system.  I trusted it to drive home but not to tow the trailer as well.  As luck  would have it a fellow racers blew up his trans on Friday and had a couple of friends drive all the way from Wis. Sat. morning with a replacement.  On Sunday afternoon they offered to tow my trailer home with me following behind.  When we got close to my home and we stopped and I hooked up to the trailer and made it the last few miles OK.

I ended up replacing all of the brake lines to the rear brakes just to be sure it never happened again!

Ive lost brakes a few times but no one panicks like my wife. She purchased my zephyr as a birthday present without me knowing. Passenger front hardline ruptured as she turned in front of our house. My buddy got to hear the horrible noises a c4 makes when stuffed in park at 20mph. Im amazed too this day the trans works.

The worst one I had was popping a rusty line (I know, I was literally driving somewhere to fix it!) mid panic stop on a busy highway when a semi cut me off, in a cross split car. This causes the car to instantly rotate around the remaining front brake. I somehow managed to keep it in the lane and not overcorrect. 

Though you want true insanity just ask my dad about how he recently decided to drive his 67 Camaro several miles down the road to his friend's shop. The car had been parked since the late 80s, manual drum/drum, 3 wheel cylinders were seized and the master didn't really do anything, he claims to have used reverse to stop, as that powerglide was toast anyway. Pics will be shared at some point. 

kb58 said:

Bonus feature:

One time I was sitting in a parking lot and had both cars on each side of me start backing out at the same time. Right then, a car was pulling into the slot facing me. End result felt *exactly* like my car was rolling forward uncontrollably - again, pretty trippy.

I have had the same thing happen to me.  In response to me thinking that my supposedly not moving car was rolling forward (it wasn’t), I pushed ferociously hard on the brake pedal to the point that I am amazed nothing broke as a result.  Freaked me out until I finally figured out what was really going on!  I bet the panicked look on my face was pretty scary.

In reply to 02Pilot :

What kind of plane? Some don't have any nosewheel steering at all, which would make that quite difficult indeed.

In reply to Matthew Kennedy :

Cessna 172.

The0retical said:

Sad thing is I've been driving for 17 years and this is the 3rd time this has happened to me.

You think maybe there's a lesson in there?

I was working at this auto parts store when a buddy came in to get parts for his 1976 Monte Carlo.  This was 1989, and the car needed brakes.  The shelving just inside this window stopped the car.  I remember it like it was yesterday. 

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It's 1979 and me being a Junior in high school takes the family '68 "98" 455, 4 barrel to pick up the Senior girl that asked me to the February turnabout dance. We are to meet at my Dad's house to gather with other kids and then head to the dance.  Flying down a road since I took a wrong turn I am doing 40mph approaching a stop sign - the road T's into the street and I have no brakes.  Brake line rotted out.  

I decide rather than barreling straight into a house I am going to take the corner the best I can and the rear end slides around and takes out the whole side of a passing car - there was a small 10" dent in front of the "98's" rear bumper that we ended up living with until he sold the car in 1984 - freaked out the couple I hit though.

Since we were pre-cell phone days I go up to a house to call my dad and the cops - the rest of evening sucked as everyone was all freaked out wanting to know where I was.

Today the funny part is my Dad was pissed I raised the electric antenna to its 6' length because I thought it made the car look cooler - he was pissed because sometimes it wouldn't go down and I was told not to play with it.  Also the cops let him slowly drive the car home which he proceeded to do.  

Here's one of my scariest no brake moments. 2 things happened. Pad knockback, although I did pump the pedal, and a high hard pedal in the MX-5. Turns out in that gen of MX-5, if you happened to turn and brake in just the right way, you would trigger a low grip ABS mode. Mazda later fixed the issue i believe.  Anyway, heres the link. Go to the 4:30 mark for the scary part.  

https://youtu.be/YRGfUDsGhpc