Jumping in here cause just yesterday I was driving back to my house after doing some shooting two hours west of Denver in the mountains. I was noticing an unusual and distinct hissing sound when I stepped on the brakes. Way louder than the usual psshhhh sound the pedal makes. I was in an area where I was about an hour from any cell service and everything was still working so I kept rolling. 10 minutes later I get the VSC warning light, and an ABS light. Everything still working fine, just the hiss. Sun was setting so I doubt I could have stopped and successfully flagged someone down or knocked on a door to use a landline to call a tow. Another 5 minutes later I’m coming down a hill and I hit the bakes and hear an audible pop or similar noise, don’t remember exactly what it sounded like but there was a distinct noise. Instantly I’m down to about 20% of usual braking capacity and there’s a constant alarm like you get if you open the driver’s door without the truck being in park.
Would have been extremely dangerous if I was braking hard on the interstate or coming up to a light. Luckily, I had already been driving very cautiously given something was up, and I was in the middle of nowhere with no other vehicles around. I keep the truck in shiftable mode at all times so I quickly dropped gears and pumped the brakes and kept her under control coming down the steep dirt road I was on. It was a long and slow drive home. By the time I had made it back to service I had already braved 45 minutes of steep winding roads. So the last 10 minutes home were a breeze compared to that, I just stayed on back roads and did 35mph max rather than wait 5 hours for a tow.
I’ve had the truck since 2020 and 156K. The brake fluid was flushed twice in the time since then and I’m at 234K now. The LX is my backup vehicle now so I don’t drive it everyday. I had noticed the last 2 drives prior to my failure a scraping noise coming from the rear drivers side wheel area. Surface level inspection lead me to believe it had to do with the pads and rotor. There were some obvious grooves being carved into the rotor and I had replacement parts on hand, but I hadn’t had time to address it, I wasn’t super worried about it. I had pulled the wheel and inspected the pads probably 5 months prior so I knew the pads were still good and figured it was just some debris caught somewhere. Now I’m wondering if it was the wheel bearing and if it played a roll in the failure. The brake fluid reservoir is completely empty and it’s clear I lost it all out the rear left. The lines appear fine and I’m in a dry climate, I keep fluid film on everything in the winter and wash the undercarriage regularly so minimal corrosion anywhere. Looking from the inside of the truck I can see that the piston is out unusually far against the inside pad. At least when compared with the passenger side rear. Photo attached.
Let me know what you guys think about where I should start with this one. I haven’t had time to hook up techstream and my ultragauge isn’t registering the codes thrown.
As a side note I think I’ve experienced most of the common (and several less common) failures these trucks have. I’ve had the amp fan buzz under the drivers seat, transmission solenoid failure leading to a new tranny due to covid supply chain issues and the need of my truck right away, AHC pump failure, valley plate leak, starter failure literally 800 miles from home and 300 miles from the nearest dealer, and some kind of AFS system failure which I still haven’t had a chance to deal with. One time I was driving right through downtown Denver and my inner tire rod literally threaded itself out of the steering rack, as it fell out it stripped the threads on the rack. So I’ve also done a steering rack.
I’ve really put a ton of time into maintenance but I might just have a cursed LX. The inner tie rod and brake system failures were both while driving and easily could have gotten me or other people killed under worse circumstances. Were it not paid off and had I not just put dissent armor on last year I might consider upgrading to a post-facelift LX. Some radar-assisted cruise control and AEB would be nice.
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