ET RAM

I was driving in town approaching a red traffic light. I applied brakes and they were hard as a rock. No movement of the pedal could be felt and very minimal braking action. I had to turn into the turning lane as I slowly coasted to a stop. I pulled into a parking lot and made a brief check and could find nothing wrong.

I decided to carefully and slowly drive the vehicle home where I could look for and make repairs. I found a vacuum line had separated fron its holder and fell on the turbo exhaust until a hole was burned in the line. I temporarily patched it with electrical tape. I then tried the brakes and they work normal again. My question is, Is this the way these brakes work? There is no fail safe system or do I have a problem? This situation would have been castastrophic if it had occurred on the road at highway speeds. Someone with little force on the pedal would have had a hard time stopping this truck as I had to push very hard on the pedal to get just a little braking action. I used the manual transmission and was ready with the emergency brake as I drove home. Fortunately it was mostly country driving. The brake warning system did not immediately give a warning but as I drove home the brake light and the ABS warning light turned on and stayed on. Any comments will be appreciated.

infidel

Vacuum system problems which can lead to no power assist on the brakes is the reason yours was the last year for vacuum assist brakes. Later models have hydro assist.
Most of the vacuum assist years were covered by a recall that beefs the vacuum system up and adds an additional 7 years to the system warranty. Take your truck to the dealer and see if it applies to your truck or has been done.

Your brake warning light may stay on even after you fix the problem. When a brake trouble code is set DC figured it is important enough that it takes 60 on/off key cycles to reset the code.

Scubasteve

There is usually enough vacuum in the booster ofr one or two applications after the supply is lost but I dont think there is a notification system that actually lets you know vacuum has been lost.

its not often that this happens anyways, one of those needle in a hay stack incidents.


Jason

ET RAM

Thanks for the replies. The tape wrap cured the problem. The brakes work normal again. I did not get a permanent warning as the ABS light turns on during the start up sequence then goes off.
This seems like a dangerous condition if it happened at the wrong time like Interstate driving, going down a hill, or having someone dart if front of you. I received no warning and there was no left over vacuum for assist. I will follow up on the recall info to see if it applies to me. Thanks for the info.

ET