Total Brake Failure! Twice! What the heck?

Monday (five days ago) on my way home from work a jeep brakes hard in front of me to make a left turn at the last second. I slam on the brakes in my GMC 3/4 ton cargo van and the pedal goes to the floor, no brakes at all. Luckily there was a winter wheat field on the right, no utility poles, no ditches, no culverts. So I took a high-speed (about 40 mph) detour through the field to avoid the jeep and then back onto the road. Every tool I own bounced off the shelving system in the process. I dropped the transmission into low and hit the e-brake and finally got it stopped about 500 feet down the road.

I had it towed to the garage where they replaced a brake line.

Mechanics, help me out here. I thought with modern brake systems with the two-chamber master cylinder having total brake failure was not supposed to happen? That you should always have at least one set of brakes, front or rear?

This morning checking the line with my little Dodge Ram 50 I left one farm and noticed the truck was pulling to the left, it never did that before. I get down the long, steep hill on Dogwood Dr. with no issues and turn into a field to drive about a 1/2 mile back to a powerline. about halfway there I hit the brakes to stop and check a set in the pumpkin patch and the pedal goes to the floor, no brakes again!

I limped back to the road and parked it, have the garage on the way.

That truck also has a two-chambered master cylinder. What gives with the total brakes failure?

My wife ask me if someone was trying to kill me. I asked, "I don't know, are you?"

If you lose one chamber and have drums on the back that are not adjusted right, it will feel like you have zero brakes.

My Tacoma had the same problem. I went to stop on a steep hill at a busy intersection and brakes went to the floor board and didnt stop! Luckily no one was coming and I just went through the red light. Also had some brake fluid in the truck so I topped off the master cyl and was able to limp it home.

With the dual master system, when you lose brakes in one half of the system, you'll still have brakes in the other half, but just barely. And if the master gets full of air, it'll feel like nothing. It's better than absolutely nothing like you'd have with a single-circuit master, but it's not much.

That is basically what my mechanic said to me goose.

glad ya didn't get hurt or hurt anything.

did you try pressing said brake pedal through the floor,using the steering wheel as leverage??

Next time , or for anyone else reading this , yes you still have half a set of brakes , hopefully the fronts. The pedal will go to the floor due to major loss of pressure at the master cylinder. Pump them and you will feel something then , but only temporarily , kinda need to pump them a bit to maintain pressure to the half that is not leaking. I have driven cars a good distance this way as a last resort to get it somewhere to get it fixed. DO NOT do this if all possible , get the car stopped and towed. I can do this because I know how , and how much I can get away with because I've worked on cars for years. Not a good thing for the inexperienced. Stop the car , get it towed. I have also had to drive a stick shift car with a broken clutch pedal shifting gears without the pedal , experienced. Not normal operating procedures , last ditch.

i'm tryin to find somebody to float the river and beaver trap next week with me.with the son off a couple weeks i may at least have somebody to drop of the jeep.and yes-my 12 ft kayak fits IN my jeep.

even has dual skunk holders.

sorry,just tryin to chear ya up a little like you did me.

Lug nut, I used to own a 87 Dodge Ram 50 sport , swb 2.6L 5sp 2wd black/gold bought it new right off the showroom floor. Nice little Japanese truck , loved it.

Very few of them left on the road , what is yours like ?

nice,lawdog has its twin i believe.

would love to find a nice one.

87 was a new model year. I believe the 85&86 were still called the D50 . 87 and up were called the Ram 50.

Don't know about the transmissions with the 2 different models and 4wd & 2wd of course are different , mine was a stick 5sp , yours stick or auto ?
One thing that ticked me off was in 88 they went to stainless exhaust , changed mine 2X before I bit the bullet and had a custom system made in stainless. Wish mine came with the stainless.

Rear drums are worthless unless set really tight and have a load on them, one thing I have seen happen is the master cylinder can completely fail in both cambers when I’ve seen this is when you stomp on the brakes hard it can take both sets of seals and bypass.

I experienced something similar this summer.

I was backing a boat into the lake, hit the brakes hard to slide the boat off the trailer and the pedal sunk to the floor. I stomped on the emergency brake and nothing happened, I shifted into 1st and hit the gas and no luck. By that time the water was 2-3 inches below the windows so I just shut off the engine quick.

Brake line blew...no brakes.

On the plus side of things, the insurance company totaled the truck, paid me way more than it was worth and I'm driving a great new truck.

pictures or video??

That’s what friends do.

I'm glad you're ok

That's why they make emergency brakes.
Lack of mtc?

That’s exactly what happened. When I pumped there was a small amount of pressure that almost immediately went away. Also, the pedal was not returning to the up position very quickly.

Since I was bouncing through a field and having a “holy crap” moment I elected to drop the tranny in low and stomp on the e-brake then concentrate on keeping it somewhat under control until I could get it back on the road and stopped.

The e brake on that truck is next to worthless. As required by law, all my vehicles are inspected annually.

Have you ever tried stopping a 6000 pound truck with just the emergency brake? I’m guessing not, otherwise you would not have made your ignorant statement Bobo.

Do they use a lot of salt on the roads there? When I lived in the Chicago area, the used so much salt the roads would get crusty, and you could taste it in the air driving down the highway. I was doing a full brake and fuel line replacement job every other week. Now in Nebraska we don't use nearly as much salt, and I can probably count on both hands the number of brake lines I've replaced in 10 years, and I've never had to do a full brake and fuel line replacement job here.

And yes, emergency brakes are more correctly called parking brakes, they're really just for holding your car still, not for stopping.

Yeah, lots of salt, mostly liquid anymore.

Correct. Plus , I hate some of the new cars that have a push button instead of a lever/pedal and cable.

As a matter of fact I did stop a loaded 11,000 lb railroad truck with the emergency brake once.
And who is maintaining your truck-a displaced Mexican rickshaw puller,lol.

A handbrake is also used for high speed cornering especially in rally racing to lock the back wheels at the correct time to create drag at the rear end.

Or bootleg turns.....done a lot of them......lol

Great for drifting too , gets ya started in the slide , then on the gas.

You know it's kinda funny , last car I had with a single master cylinder was my '66 Stang. They mandated dual master cylinders starting 1/1/68 so almost all cars made to be sold in Sept '67 onwards had them. I've had bunches of brake lines bust on cars I've owned and ones I've worked on. The point of going to a dual master cylinder was for safety as if you blow a line with a single master cylinder , you have zero brakes.

But dual master cylinders work like crap with a broken line. You would think you would have a lot more braking action with half a set of brakes but you don't. Even with properly adjusted brakes , at best you have 30% with the fronts only , less with the backs only. I thought the whole idea was to give you half a set of brakes. It's not even close. Parking brakes were more stout back then too , could use them in an emergency , now kinda just good for parking.

So did I. It just took several hundred feet. But you stopped yours on a dime right? You’re full of crap.




Is that what you were doing with the railroad truck?

No, but if you'd been at Lyman on the 4th of July you'd have seen it.

thats cold water too.

I’d question the wife about this first! That D50 should of stopped, not on a dime but stopped with enough pressure mine will.

Lugnuts a bit of a drama queen,he should have stuck his foot out the door and stopped like Fred Flintstone.

An Amish man never has these problems...

First thing I'd check is to see if your wife recently increased the amount of life insurance on you

Aren't most older vehicles equipped with cable operated rear brakes? I've used them when my brakes have failed. Not perfect but because it's a secondary system I wouldn't expect it to be.

The Ram stopped okay. I was way out in a field when I lost brakes, not going that fast. After the brakes had failed I drove it ot to the road and was able to stop it by using the hand brake. Pedal wasn't doing much at all.

I just talked to my mechanic, driver side upper control arm tore off the frame and that's what took out a brake line.

My cargo van has a cable operated parking brake on the rear drum brakes. That i how I eventually got it stopped.

That's what my buddy said when we were peeing off the dock at Lyman. I said, "It's deep too."

I've had so many piece of crap cars and trucks in my life that this was actually a fairly common scenario for me. I've lost enough of the brakes on the Harley to cause a pucker factor of 10 too. Not a fun situation at all.

I'm glad you're OK man. You'd think that since "inspections" here are mandatory that popping brake lines would not come as a surprise to us. I know I'm running stainless lines on the Shovelhead now.

Most of them do have cable operated rear parking brakes. Keep in mind , on all cars your front brakes do the bulk of the work.
As far as using them to stop , it all depends on how well adjusted they are and how much lining is left. My dodge ram 50 , I always kept them adjusted properly because I had to , it was a stick shift. A lot of vehicles with automatic transmissions this gets overlooked a bit because you are not using them everyday. About the only thing he could be guilty of is making sure his brake lines got inspected for wear/tear/aging of components and properly adjusted.

Mines an 89, a 2nd gen Ram 50 4WD. It's a great little truck. I've been using it as my trapline vehicle and winter beater for the last five years.

But fighting rust due to the heavy road salt in our area is getting to be a full time battle. I've replaced the rear leaf spring shackles, a frame cross member, fuel filler neck, exhaust system, fuel lines, brake lines, tranny lines and had the gas tank media blasted, brazed and sealed. I was planning on using a rust encapsulater on the frame this summer but now with this upper control arm thing (caused by a rusty frame) I don't know. This may be the end of the line for this truck.

Lugnut, they are great little trucks mine went to the boneyard about a year ago , mostly rust issues. I had it 31 years , longest I've ever owned a vehicle for , record for me. MSRP was about 8k. Those were the days......

That's a great run.

For someone like me , yes great run. I've owned lots of cars/trucks. More than 200. 100% true no b.s. I have quite honestly lost count. The real number might be closer to 300 , I don't know. Play around with cars a lot and they are just things like any other thing. I've even owned cars for literally hours before selling it for a bit more. Gotten over 25 cars for free over the years. My current daily driver I got for free , a 05 Mazda tribute awd v6.

But the Dodge I bought new , kept it all this time , was the only owner. Good truck.

Them D50s can still be found out west or down south in pretty good shape rather cheap, buy 3 and make one from the ground up is what I did.

Getting hard to find parts for them now. One of the reasons I sent mine to the boneyard was rust. The nail in the coffin was the gas tank rotted out. There are no new ones made anymore. It's 30 years old. Pulling a used tank out of another one is iffy at best. I looked into putting in a fuel cell but it would have been a pain. One thing I've learned is when a car gets that old , it is an uphill battle to keep it running. Different if it is a classic or real popular car that parts are available. Time for something newer.

This is one of the nicest cars I've owned.

Most people never use there parking brakes. This is what modern rear drum brake cars use for the brake shoe self-adjusters. Older cars adjusted when you backed up and hit the brakes. A lot of cars rear brakes are basically useless because of never adjusting for wear. A lot of vehicles are going to disc brakes in the rear which do not need adjusted.

Sounds like you're having our kinda luck with vehicles.

I had a 2 wd in a '84 D-50,went thru 3 transmissions,the 4th was going fast when I returned it to the dealer(lease).Worst experience and vehicle I've ever had to date.

Love mine I dropped a good frame on the driveway and found parts and trucks to do a total rebuild on this 87 took 3 months to rebuild it.

Wow , never heard much problems with the earlier D50's
Automatic? 2.0L 4 cylinder? How many miles were on it when you traded in on the lease ?

You have my curiosity now.

Looks nice , looks like the sport model too. If it had bucket seats , it was the sport model.

I have a extended cab in the out building that’s in good shape also engine/trans ready to drop in it.

Good looking truck Law Dog. It would be great to have a clean, rust-free one like that. Here's a pic of my Ram 50 soon after I got it. You can see the size difference next to my Tundra.

I'm rolling around in an 88 mighty max 2wd. It's an awesome little truck with 190k miles. I've got to either re-ring the engine this summer or get rid of it, it's burning waaaay to much oil.

Rebuild the head or get a new one stud the head bolts add a laminated head gasket and keep driving it.

My Ram 50/Mighty Max only has 98,000 on it, up from 70,000-some when I bought it. I knew from the beginning that rust would kill it long before the drive train quit.

Mine was a stick,4 cylinder.Just under 60,000 when I turned it in.The first time it went it had under 10,000 miles so it was covered by the agreement and the dealer ship footed the bill.After that it was all on me.I fought with Chrysler saying it was a defective transmission but they blew me off.

88 2WD for parts paid $100 for it cab has hail damage and the running boards need work like they all do the bed is about perfect.

Wow.. a stick....I was 99% thinking you were going to tell me it was an automatic. Stickshifts are usually rock solid whoever makes them . Automatic transmissions are usually the ones that have troubles. I'm still like wow. Plus it failed again and again....wow.

I had the 2.6L with a 5sp stick. It had to have a different transmission. I was in my mid 20's when I bought it. Drove it like an animal. Young enough to drive like a manic , old enough to know how to drive it good. I hammered that transmission. Drove it so hard that after 8,000 miles I got rid of the factory 14" wheels and tires and put 15" wheels and tires on it because I was slipping through almost every corner. The 15" tires gave me more grip and changed my final gear ratio with a bigger wheel. I was just burning off the tires with the stock wheels. I truly hammered that transmission to the point I had excess shifter wear by the time I hit 100 ,000. I had to replace some of the bushings in the shifter. I was changing clutches every 30,000 or so because of my lead foot. I don't drive like that anymore , but I put that transmission through heck. Had to be a different transmission. I'm going to check with a friend of mine who is an ace dodge mechanic and find out what transmissions were in the D50 vs the Ram 50.
So sorry to hear you had problems with yours. Thanks again for the info.
I'm still amazed......

Law dog , That looks like a longbed , yes ?
I bought a longbed too for parts , a blue one. Yep , my 1st one (shortbed) had one of the rocker panels ( running boards ) rot out too. Overall that truck looks pretty good.

Yes a longbed 2.6 auto the head gasket is the killer to the 2.6 but a easy fix I have a spare motor and trans in the shed if need.

Are you referring to using ARP headstuds and an MLS gasket for a 4g63 engine? I've replaced valve stem seals already, but if the head comes off, I'll likely get it rebuilt, just depends how much it costs.

Yep, one of the first things I did was put a new head gasket on my 2.6L.