Brake help!!!

Picked up my new deuce at the base it needed two new batts and fuel. it took 56 days for the ecu only problem no breaks 700 miles home took it slow down shifting to slow it down then ejay to stop drove therw rain than ice than a foot of snow 14 hours in that seat butt will never be the same. need some help on the brakes pedel goes to the fioor it looks like the breaks were work on new tacom master new lines and bleeders

well you bleed the lines? Just go step by step. Cant really tell you what is wrong until you do a little work on them. could be blown line, wheel cylinder, bad master or booster no or low on fluid.. ect.

hey i have 2 deuces that the pedal went to the floor on. filled up the master cylinder. dot 5 silicone. ensured there were no leaks loose/broken hoses then used one of the pressure bleeders and following a previous post bled the system. only got air out of one of the wheel cylinders rest were fine. interestingly enough the cylinders that had air come out were the same one on each truck go figure. now the pedals are rock hard. do your self a favor get one of the pressure bleeders. takes about 10 minutes to totally bleed the brake system.

todd1874,
I know you know this, but that was not good at all driving home with no brakes. You could have killed a lot of innocent people and we would all be in trouble now.
Not "cool" at all.
BC

DITTO!!!!

You could have killed a lot of innocent people and we would all be in trouble now.

Click to expand...

Yes, only kill the guilty people, and one at a time!


sorry BC, I saw an opportunity and took it!

Boatcarpenter said:

todd1874,
I know you know this, but that was not good at all driving home with no brakes. You could have killed a lot of innocent people and we would all be in trouble now.
Not "cool" at all.
BC

Click to expand...

I fully understand the desire to get a truck home where one can comfortably work on it with all of your tools at hand, plenty of liquid refreshment nearby, and a familiar bed to rest in. But I hate to think what would have happened to you AND any other parties in your way had you needed to make a quick stop!

Your emergency brake is just that, AN EMERGENCY BRAKE! It is not designed to repeatedly stop this multi-ton vehicle. And it won't stop you quickly when you really need to!

And given the fact that your hydraulic/air-assist brakes were not functioning, there is a pretty good chance that your E-brake is also in need of service.

Bad enuf of an idea (but more forgivable & understandable) if you had been moving the truck just a handful of miles from the point of recovery. But doing this on a "14 hour" drive? What were you thinking?!?

Please warn me the next time you are doing a recovery like this. I will tell all those that I love to stay home that day!



PS: Sorry that I felt the need to climb up on my soap-box and chastise you. I'll try to give you the benefit-of-doubt, & assume that this was simply a matter of over-enthusiasm & "get-it-done" determination. I am SO glad you made it home safely. Please think twice about this next time.

Scratch that, it's not an emergency brake...it's a parking brake!!

Well, I can honestly say this is by far the dumbest thing I have heard of any member doing yet. Get into a wreck and take out a family in a Honda not to mention while the deuce demil codes are under review and what do you think would happen to all of them then?

Jeez I can see the potential headlines now... "Twenty children are dead after a man in a massive military death machine sold to him by the government ran into their school bus this morning. In response to this tragedy President Obama has called for a ban on private ownership of ex-military vehicles."

WOW! U asked right up front for all these replys, these are tacktical trucks and are NOT road worthy untill U go over all that needs to be done and Made it LEGAL . yeesh u are lucky please understand our feelings and opinions, It is never worth such a trip. u were not in control, just lucky...Randy

Hey DH, good idea. When do we start?
BC

Us firefighter/EMS types have a phrase for idiots who knowingly do foolish things:

"Job Security"

Taking out the 9v in your smoke detector is all on you baby. That endangers your family and the poor shlubs like me who have to come and try to save you-yours and extinguish the home when it burns because you didnt hear the detector go off. Its the job I accepted when i signed on so I can deal with it.

What smokes me is that were you to ass end a minvan, I or my bretheren in ND would have to come out in the same poor weather you had driven through. We would be risking our lives to get there, risking the lives of the motorists we would drive past to get to the crash site so we could come and clean up the mess you caused. And turds like you never wreck on single dead end streets... its usually a huge, busy 4-6 lane highway SO the firefighters cleaning up the mess along with the cops and tow truck drivers are all in harms way on the side of the road, working in poor weather, low visibility, treating injuries caused by your impatience.

Small children have the luxury of impatience on christmas day or birthdays. They want what they want NOW. MEN who drive and operate 7 ton vehicles on public roads do not, sir. If your impatience is more important I would implore you to sell your truck immediately and try a hobby that lets you put only yourself at risk. THERE is NO place/reason/excuse that you can offer that would begin to forgive you for making a 14 hr trip through less than favorable conditions with no proper brakes. You were not clever, just lucky. Posting it on this site and bragging that you got away with it makes you look like a bafoon and doing what you did is tantamount to vehicular manslaughter whether you realize it or not.

You shouldn't have even bothered to post this. People love a good reason to flame other on the internet, there's no better reason to light the fires than in the name of safety. Anyone who has ever looked at a brake post should know that, maybe search next time time and read the other flames, before dousing your self with gasoline.

Anyways at 700 miles in 14 hours it's you averaged 50mph. In the rain and snow, with no brakes.... That's pretty dangerous, but considering you're in NORTH DAKOTA in bad weather and not New Jersey, I doubt you had many other cars to avoid eating. In order to kill 20 people you first have to find the other 20 people in the state.

There's only a few things that could cause the brakes to go to the floor. Bad line, bad master, or bad wheel cylinder, all 3 relating to the common problem of no fluid or air in the lines. If you had a bad airpack generally you would have a hard pedal with no brake, or a normal pedal, with difficulty stopping due to no boost.

Did you check the master cylinder for fluid? That is always first. If low and if the master cylinder has a check valve cap instead of the air line breather, this will allow a vacuum to develop when the wheel cylinders weep. This takes time to happen.

A simple blast of 15 PSI to the master cylinder, once the 1/8 NPT fitting on the top is removed will reset the wheel cylinders, restoring brakes.

This story has brought a lot of posts about how dagerous it is to intentionally operate a 7 ton vehicle without brakes. I must agree with all of those who have indicated how scary that is.


I never bought my deuce with the idea that it would be perfect. I knew it did not have brakes to start with and might not start. I arranged and had it hauled home on a flatbed. I was fortunate and it runs great, and now stops good. It took hard work, parts and some technical know-how from the resources here.

There is a ton of good advice in this site about how to SAFELY recover a vehicle. Even so, it is still an operation that is high in the potential for the unforseen happening. Some of these trucks have sat for years before being sold at auction. Other systems besides brakes can be in question.

If the orignal person who posted this needs help with the brakes, I suggest that they search the site for Deuce Brakes and you will find a wealth of information and technical instruction as to how to fix that problem.

And a simple, 5 minute connection of a pressure bleeder to the master cylinder would have fixed the brakes.

I learned this helping TexAndy recover one of his. This is most common on trucks with the breather caps on the MC instead of the airline as the cap allows vacuum to build. This pulls the wheel cylinder cups off their respective pistons. Since all 6 WC do this equally, the displacement volume of the MC isn't enough to seat all 12 cups against their pistons.