Stiff brake pedal/lost braking power

Yesterday I noticed while driving my 97 Riv, that the brake pedal was unusually stiff, and I had to use more force then I usually do to stop. When I got down to slower speeds, I noticed that If I vary the pressure on the brake pedal, I would hear kind of a creaking sound coming from my front driver's side area, the caliper I'm guessing. My Riv has 147K on it right now, and shortly after I bought it 7 months ago I replaced all the of the rear brakes and the front pads of the front brakes, as they were worn down to nothing. Besides some judder at high speed braking, they have worked just fine. Could my front calipers be seizing up? They do look fairly old, and I did reuse the rotors as they were with-in thickness spec.

I have also been hearing what sounded like a bad wheel bearing on the drivers side as well for a while, could these two things be connected in any way?

Thanks
Matt

You don't want to take any shortcuts on the brakes, so if you aren't sure about any of this ask someone close to you who knows for assistance!

Calipers are probably not siezed unless you notice some other symptoms. Creaking can be normal. Are the brakes applying and releaseing smoothly is a more relevant question there.

Re: the loss of power assist - sounds like you might have a bad vacuum booster, or a vacuum line came disconnected. First look very closely for vacuum leaks. There is also a check valve on the booster to hold it's vacuum in. It's possible that check valve is bad and you don't have enough vacuum at idle.

As long as the pedal is firm, the master cylinder is probably okay. It can be hard to replace the booster without removing the master cylinder. But at the same time, if the brake lines are rusted you can open a can of worms trying to replace the MC and have a bunch of brake lines break. PB Blaster (best penetrant!) on all the brake line fittings many times before you try to remove them will help.

Oddly it was fine today. I will keep on eye on it for sure though, thanks for the advice.

Mattwa wrote:

Oddly it was fine today. I will keep on eye on it for sure though, thanks for the advice.

If the vacuum booster has a pinhole in it's internal diaphragm, you may see it come and go. It sounds like you are losing vacuum though. Look at all the vacuum lines and test the check valve.

If the check valve is working correctly, the booster will store vacuum. If you pull the connection at the booster, you should hear a hiss as air rushes in.

To check the booster for proper operation, make several brake applications, with the ENGINE OFF, to exhaust the booster. Then apply pressure to the brake pedal, and start the engine. If the booster is working correctly, the pedal will drop lower.