Bob said:
Most likely at that mileage you need new front brake pads and to at the minimum resurface the rotors (although you don't complain about brake pulsing/warpage).
True, except you gotta wonder why the tell-tales haven't been screeching their heads off if the pads are worn down.
If the disc pad material is down to about the thickness of the metal backing plate on the disc pad, then you should replace them. make sure you look at both the outer and inner discs...
(obviously you meant outer and inner *pads*, not discs, there) 8^)
...and at both the leading
and trailing edges since it is not uncommon for them to wear a bit unevenly. Most likely the back brakes should still be OK for a few more miles since they usually last 1.5X to 2X longer.
True - it would be very unusual on this car for the rear brakes to need any attention at this mileage. Fronts? Yes. Rears? No.
You can certainly try to adjust the rear brakes to see if this helps firm up the pedal. You can generally accomplish this by backing up and then applying the parking brake...
Not on this car. Service brakes are independent from the parking brakes on this car. Rear service brakes are disk (no adjustment possible), parking brakes (on rear) are drum - the disk and drum are parts of a single piece of metal called a "top hat" for obvious reasons. Backing up and putting on the brakes will have no effect on the parking brake on this car.
Also, the parking brakes should not need any adjustment as they do not wear at all (unless left on a good bit while the car is moving). If any adjustment is necessary, there is a cable tensioner (at the junction between the left and rear parking brake cables) that should be adjusted.
There is an adjuster on the shoes themselves, but it should be adjusted (to bring the shoes out to a specified diameter) only one time when new shoes are installed (which should never be required over the life of the car). After that (i.e., after the intial factory build), any need for parking brake adjustment would be due to cable stretch or shoe wear that could only be caused by abuse of the parking brake (application of parking brake for an extened period of time with the vehicle moving).
If your parking brake is truly not applying strongly, then maybe someone did smoke them. Check them or get them checked and find out who abused them (either by intentionally applying them with the vehicle moving or by accidentally leaving them on while driving) if the shoes are worn out.
This adjusts them outward. If you don't
regularly use the parking brake or have not adjusted them since getting the vehicle, then you may need to do this a few times before you feel the parking brake grab sooner.
No - see above.
Another thing you should check is to see if the brake fluid in the reservoir is up to the full line. If it ever got low before you added, you could have air in the lines causing the soft pedal as well. If you do the brakes, you should definitely bleed the fluid and replace it with new since it can absorb moisture and also cause problems over time.
Good luck and post what you find since I own a 2001 Intrepid with 36K and am about to do the front brakes myself.
Bill Putney
(to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")
