Hi,

Hopefully someone can offer some advice on this. My mk5 polo has recently developed an issue with the brakes. Twice I have been coming to a slow stop, once at traffic lights once into a car parking space, and the pedal has suddenly dropped lower and lost brake efficiency, but has stopped. As you can imagine this gave me a bit of a shock.

Now the pedal loses all feel when first braking after the car is started, by this I mean, that it goes down a long way before braking, although it does stop. After this the pedal is higher up again, and seems to work ok for the rest of the journey.

I tested an emergancy stop on a long safe bit of road, and it braked fine. I can also pump the pedal and it stays firm, so i dont think I have a leak.

The ABS light came on a couple of months back, but went out again the next day so i put it down to a dodgy sensor or something. But now I think it may be something serious, the servo maybe?

Has anyone experienced issues like this, what could it be?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I can't afford to pay a garage to look into it right now, but really need my car to get to work!

Cheers,

Ben

It doesn't sound like a servo problem, but to check it, pump the pedal four or five times, keep your foot on the pedal and start the engine, the pedal should then go down some way as the vacuum assists your effort.

Long travel of the pedal is normally due to lost motion, as the front pads are normally in continual contact with the discs, it is doubtful that the problem is there,it is more likely that the automatic adjusters on the rear brakes need looking at, but as this seems to be an intermitant problem,it may be more difficult to pinpoint, but I would suggest that you start by getting the rear wheels off and checking those adjusters.

Hope that this is of some help.

Regards.

Thanks for the advice mate. I'll whip em off this weekend and see if I can work out what's going on.

Cheers

I have found on my 6n2 that the pipe that runs behind the air box from the servo has perished in two places, causing a vacuum leak (the hoses perish within time unfortunately)! I have bought some silicone hose to replace it with from ebay, going to do this today actually. Take the air box off and check this pipe i'd suggest. Also, the 6n2s where recalled due to a peddle box fault, was yours recalled and repaired?? I called my VW dealer who said my reg was recalled and sorted.

This shows where the vacuum leak was on either side of the valve