I'm starting to go thru the car before I go to Md inspection. The trip from Fla was good but I did notice that the brake pedal felt a bit mushy and the engagement was pretty low.

Normally I would attribute these symptoms to excessive brake wear, rotors turned past the spec, or the system needs to be bled. I removed the front left wheel to find no visual wear and what appears to be new rotors. I saying new because in stead of 5 lug holes these had 10. It took me 1.5 hours to remove and reinstall the wheel because I have a few problems (back and hip). I did check the RH front outboard pad without taking the wheel off and it appears that the rotor and pads are the same on the that side as well. I also looked at the rear, they appeared to have a bit more pad missing but quite a bit left. The parking brake pads look brand new with no signs of road grime. The rear rotors also so no signs of excessive wear.

The brake fluid is old and brown so if any work had been done recently no one bled the brakes.

I can't imgine that the brakes on this car are any different from others, but I have never had a car with adaptive cruise, which BTW worked great alot of brake action whick makes me wonder if the low pedal is normal.

2005 MY Super V8.

Dave

 

It sounds like you are way over due for a brake fluid exchange. For your part of the country 2 years is a good rule of thumb. My guess is that your pedal will improve with a proper fluid exchange and bleed.

 

+1 for a flush, these brakes are quite powerful. By the way the Brembo rotors from Jaguar also had 10 holes in the hub. FWIW I wore my pads close to the metal and braking performance and pedal feel had not changed. I did feel a modest improvement after performing a double brake flush.

 

Flush and bleed are on the hit list when I take it in for the MD inspection. It's easy enough to do but it to much up and down for this ole broken body. :-)

So let me ask you this. Where does your pedal engage/forcefully stop?