Brake Failure - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

oldsub86 · 09-08-2008, 01:43 PM

Has anyone experienced sudden brake failure? We have a 98 Avalon and just experienced some sort of failure. We think that what happened was that the power brakes did not work. My wife was pulling into a parking spot and when she stepped on the brakes, the car did not stop. The pedal did not sink to the floor so I think the most likely thing is that the brakes did not have power assist and she did not realize it quickly enough to really stand on the pedal and stop the car. She did a fair amount of damage to the front end so we are waiting to see if it is repaired or written off. She thinks it did this same thing once before back in the spring of 08. It was not serious that time as she was on the road and had room and did not hit anything. I had a similar issue with a Honda Civic some years ago and that turned out to be a check valve sticking in the vacuum hose from the intake manifold to the brake booster. I am wondering if we might have a similar issue on this car and if anyone else has experienced something similar.

Randy

oldsub86 · 09-09-2008, 02:00 PM

I have spoken with a couple of different mechanics who tell me this may well be an ABS problem. A check valve in the ABS accumulator sticks and prevents the master cylinder from pressurizing the brakes. You get a rock hard pedal but no brakes.

If you ever experience something like this have it checked out. Our car did it once before about 4 months ago and we didn't think anything much of it. This time it was somewhat disastrous but could have been much worse. Only the car was damaged and no one was hurt.

Randy

hevster1 · 09-09-2008, 05:03 PM

Before you go crazy make sure the floor mat isn't bunched up under the pedal. Very Very Common.

oldsub86 · 09-09-2008, 10:13 PM

It was not the floor mats. That used to happen to me in my Suburban but isn't and has not been the issue with the Avalon. A moot point now as the insurance company has elected to write it off. They stopped looking when they got over $9000 in estimated repair costs. Unfortunate as it really was a nice clean and low mileage car.

Randy