This week the brakes in my 2000 LX with about 195k mi had some sort of sudden failure in the ABS valve body that cause fluid to dump out at a fairly rapid rate. I posted this failure in the main forum earlier but thought I ought to post here also.
I drove my LX over 100 mi that day with no issues and parked it in the driveway. I went back about an hour later to moved it so the Mrs could pull her cruiser in. I looked back at where the LX was parked and there was as huge puddle on the ground. I shut it down and looked under the truck and fluid was raining down the driver side frame rail in the front wheel well. I popped the hood and there was a steady drip coming from under the brake Master Cylinder area. The drip slowly stopped after a minute or so. When the key was turned back to the 'on' position the drip immediately came back as the booster pump powered up. The leak seems to be coming from near a hole in the bottom of the ABS block which is next to where the leads for the booster pump connect. Below is a picture of where the fluid was dripping from. I disassembled and took a picture of the bottom of the ABS valve body up inside the hole. It appears that there is a smaller tube or hole that goes up into the valve body. It is likely that what ever seal or component failed caused fluid to dump through that hole.
Some things to note:
The reservoir was not over filled and brakes had not been worked on recently.
This truck has been a TX truck all its life and is about as rust/corrosion free as they get.
The leak is not coming from the seals between the reservoir and MC as that area was dry and the leak seems to be driven by the pressure of the brake booster pump.
The last time I did a full flush on the brake system including the ABS module using Tech Stream was about a year and a half ago and I use Prestone Dot 3 brake fluid.
No alarms or lights went off, possibly because there was still fluid in the reservoir to feed the pump.
I feel very fortunate I was just in the driveway when this happened.
I filed an incident report with safecare.gov
I searched the forum and it seems that there are only a handful of brake failures of this nature, so hopefully it is rare instance as we have two LCs of similar vintage to the LX.
Right now I am in desperate need of an ABS Valve Body. Toyota will only sell the ABS Valve Body with the master cylinder as a sub assembly part no. 47025-60041 for about $1,400 with tax and they say it is back ordered and will take at least a week to get one. If anyone has an ABS Valve body for a 2000-2002 LC/LX that they may have left over from replacing the whole unit for either a master cylinder failure or a booster motor failure, I would be very interested in purchasing it. The last to pictures are of what I need. I have also posted a wanted add for this item in the Mud Classified.
