Two separate problems with my brakes, and no idea if they are related or not.

The past few weeks, I've been getting a minor grinding sound. (Hate the word grinding, as it sounds too harsh for it, but we'll go with that) and a correlating virbration in the brake pedal whenever I heard the sound. It has gotten progressively worse, from happening only occasionally, and now happening whenever I try to brake at slow speeds.

Coincidentially, one of my brake lines was rusted and finally went the other day. With this truck being my only mode of transportation at the time, I drove around town with only my parking brake. I had a bottle of brake fluid on me to keep refilling the reservoir, but one of the reservoirs went dry a couple times despite my efforts.

Anyways, I finally got the brake line replaced and had 3 of the wheels (both front and the right drivers side) bled out. The bleeder on the right passenger side is rusted on pretty tight, but my buddy assures me that getting it bled out through three is probably enough.

Problem is, my brake pedel is still going to the floor. It has *some* stopping power (slows it down, at least) but it's nowhere near as solid as it was before the line burst. Am I going to have to get that 4th wheel bled, or could this be a complication arising from the cylinder going dry? I've searched around, and saw a handful of posts saying never to let it go dry, but no real elaboration on why. As far as I can tell, there are no other leaks.

Any help on the ABS problem would be nice, too. I'm willing to bet it's a sensor problem; I'm getting the Haynes manual tomorrow to hopefully figure it out.

Oh, and as for brake lights, the brake/parking brake light was on intermittently when I was driving around with the burst line. Sometimes it was on, sometimes it wasn't. Hasn't been on since I had the line replaced, though.

 

You are going to have to get the other line bled. From letting the master cylinder run dry, you have air in your system, ALL OF YOUR SYSTEM. Reason you are getting the "PEDAL TO THE FLOOR" is, air can be compressed but fluid can not. A wheel cylinger is like 10 bucks, and, very easy to change. (If you trust yourself taking the back brakes apart.) If not, get someone else to do it, preferrably not your buddy, that said you don't need to bleed all of your lines.

As for the "grinding", How do your front pads and rotors look? Sounds like you need a front brake job as well. Your rotors need machined, I am "guessing" they are warped. That would cause vibration, and, noise.

Let us know how it turns out. Good Luck!

 

Yep! What Keith said ^^^^

I'll add that 97,98 models had caliper problems - One of the dual pistons would hang up on the drivers side while the other would pressurize.

If your driving your vehicle , you need to stop until you fix it correctly before you end up regretting it and seriously hurt someone or yourself..

Replace - Mannn, just fix it! You have to know this is wayy F'ed up.. Fix it before kill someone.