the brakes in my 1980 280zx arent working well anymore as of yesterday. The brake light came on, the pedal goes to the floor almost before stopping. I thought I might just need to bleed my brakes, and did, but that did not help. The rear on the passenger side was bleeding fine at first and then would barely push out any fluid, and I made sure the resivoir always had fluid. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

bad master cylinder, cant expect a 27 yr old part to last forever.

 

so do I rebuild, buy new, where to shop? thanks

 

autozone has them for about 28.00 - 161.00

 

lets hear some other opinions before you make a final decision..

 

good idea, are we sure its a bmc? I bled my brakes over and over and over, and nothing. it just goes almost all the way to the floor. it feels like it has no pressure most of the way.all of them bleed fine, but no pressure builds. sound like a broken bmc?

 

sounds like a worn out MC, no pressure, or bad seals inside on the little piston thing..

 

id say master cylinder as well, just buy a rebuilt unit and be done, dont bother doing it yourself, the kit to do it is 5 bucks cheaper. is your labour worth 5 bucks?

 

yea Ill go get a reman from autozone for 30 dollars and hopefully that will do it

 

if not check your ABS unit












(just kidding)

 

My master cylinder was $20 and some change. Of course it was in 2002, but shouldn't be much more than that. It was for my '81, back then. Also your problem could be your power brake booster, if you have one. I am not sure on that, I know I have one in each of my 280zx's. But I think it is quite rare, for them to go out.

 

I dont think it is the booster Ive felt a car where that went out before. Im going to go ahead and get a BMC this week and let you all know how that goes

 

if it was the booster it would be feel like having manual brakes, try stopping 3k pounds manually..

 

done it... its not that bad.... could be alot worse....

 

Yeah I drove my Firebird daily, for a long time, with a bad power brake booster. Something I will be replacing, when I start on her again. But yeah it is more than likely your MC. Pretty easy to change, not much to it, good luck man.

 

$20 for a brake master??? wow... that's super cheap. I thought they cost more like $60-80 new.

I would agree with the opinions the others made. that is, assuming you bled them correctly. some people say they bleed brakes but when questioned how they bled them we find out they don't know how to bleed brakes. Its hard to know someone's experience with cars if they're fairly new to the forum.

 

try driving a loaded older chevy suburban without power brakes or steering..

 

will do....

 

try driving a riding lawnmower without power brakes or steering... wow! scary stuff at 2mph

 

done that^^^ damn near shat my pants.

 

alright after its been sittin forever while ive been at school carless i came back today installed the bmc and bled and I have nothing at all. There seems to be some fluid under the car dead center so I dont know what to think of that. I am not sure how much effort is required to redo the lines if that is what is necessary but I probably dont have the time. How much does a shop usually charge for a problem like mine?