2007 S60 Soft brake pedal *FIX*

[fazool]

Hi MVS-ers

I still own my Volvo and two of my girls still own their Volvo's. I've been away from MVS for a while so haven't posted recently.

This week I did a full brake job on my 2007 S60 2.5T AWD. I've done it a ton of times but strangely the pedal was incredibly soft and would sink to the floor when held.

So, I presumed it was because of pushing the caliper cylinders back or some entrained air,e tc. It was time for a brake flush anyway so I used my "motive" power bleeder to flush and bleed the whole system and fill it with fresh DOT4.

No change, no improvement.

At this point I had four new rotors, all new pads, flushed and bled fluid and a horrible pedal. And it only went bad after my brake job.


So, I scoured the web, hoping it wasn't time for a new master cylinder or booster. But the problem arose when I did the brakes so I suspected (knew?) it was related to that.

I found a helpful comment hiding away here on MVS. The author had the same symptoms as me and bled his brakes with no improvement. He then found that one of his caliper retainer springs wasn't seated properly and fixing that solved his problem.

Sure enough! Both my front caliper retainer springs were seated wrong. I don't know why - I've done my Volvo brakes on all my Volvo's for decades. Maybe too much coffee (or beer) that time. Anyway, I fixed the clips and the problem vanished.

It sounds totally silly but it was completely the cause (and solution) of the soft/sinking pedal. Examining the brakes I saw the wear pattern on the rotor was odd and only contacting the outermost diameter. So, the clip had the pads and calipers misaligned and not making contact.

[abscate]

On my VW Eurovan, I had the brakes bled and new brake fluid flushed during State inspection - and about a month later I had soft pedal. They had left the brake springs off entirely..and couldn't find them.

I thanked them kindly, bought new ones online, put them in.

"For 20 dollars of brake springs, they are out of my life forever."

Chazz Palminteri

[JRL]

Besides all that what also helps is installing SS brake lines
I just did the fronts on my P2XC and you can feel the difference, I expect it to be even better after we do the rears (a bit tougher to do)!