Bear with me, this is my first post. Have a 92 RoadTrek on a Ram 250 chassis. Front brakes appear to be doing all the work, pads disappear quickly plus front locks up. Vehicle has RWAL and front disk brakes. Have never felt the antilock kick in. Know there is a hydraulic control valve with a differential piston. Has anyone had this piston freeze, throwing most of the braking on the front? Would appreciate any help with this. Get in some bad situations on occasion.

 

Have you ruled out a bad master cylinder or if your back brakes are adjusted properly?

 

New shoes in the back. Appears to be no leakage or such in the master cylinder. I'm thinking there may be only about 90.000 to 100.000 mi on the vehicle. Anti-lock part, or lack of it concerns me. Any experience with that control valve? Delay piston, on the front brakes definitely seems to be working but the back brakes don't seem to kick in after that. I know I could change the valve and hope but someone else's experience may save me bucks. It's a bear on wet roads.

 

I wouldn't be too quick to blame the anti-lock system. If the valve you've referred to leaks at all, then fluid is passing it and the back brakes would still work. What you've got is no fluid getting pumped to the back brakes, OR fluid is getting pumped back there but the shoes are too far away from the drums.

If it were me I'd be looking at the rear brakes as the problem. More so since you just mentioned there are new shoes back there. That tells me that they never were adjusted correctly, or they were and the self adjusters are jammed. The jamming happens a lot because people tend to screw them in without cleaning and greasing the threads. This causes them to bind enough where the self-adjusting mechanism can not apply enough pressure to turn them as the shoes wear.

 

Think your first post deserves some consideration. Vehicle is 15 yrs old, albeit in excellent shape, but the master cylinder could be bad. Pedal drops slowly. with pressure on it, standing still. Back shoes are OK and have been re-adjusted twice. Auto adjust system is lubricated well and we checked it a couple of times. I won't get around to changing the master cylinder for a month or more but will let you know what happens.

Thanks for the advice.

 

Yep, classic symptom of a bad MC. Why are you going to wait over a month to fix it? In the meantime you could kill yourself or someone else.

 

I'm in Canada at the moment. Won't use the van until we head for New Jersey. It's not a thing I can't handle. Just must remember, don't tailgate. Will change the MC at my son's place on the way to Florida.

Thanks again.

 

alloro,

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, have been busy. Thanks for your help. Replaced m/c and thoroughly flushed system, 3 qts of fluid through. Results are great, 1000% better. Thanks again.

 

Nice!
Welcome.