Hello,

I've got a 2000 Jetta / Turbo / 5-speed manual transmission. I'm having some annoying "brake issues" -- at least I think it's brake related. Here are the symptoms:

I turn the car on and start driving and for the first 10 minutes or so everything feels fine. The brake pedal is nice and easy to press and when I press it, it goes down a few inches as it should. After about 10 minutes of driving two things start happening:

1. The brake pedal becomes very hard to press. I can only press it like 1/2 inch but it's very responsive.

2. I get the feeling like the brakes are slightly engaged as I'm driving. The car feels more labored than usual and if I'm going 30 MPH on a flat stretch of road and I put the car in neutral, it slows down faster than it should.

I haven't noticed much of a burning smell. Just a tiny bit but then again in the state it's in, I haven't tried to drive too far too fast.

My mechanic (who is not a dealer but specializes in VWs) thought for sure it was the master cylinder so he put in a new one. When he had removed the master cylinder, he said he checked to see if there was any water in the power booster but there was none. After having the master cylinder replaced the problem is worse. It was intermittent before and now the above happens all the time.

I don't know if this is helpful or not but after driving it for about 20 minutes today I pulled over and felt each of hubcaps. The front driver one and the rear passenger one where significantly hotter than the other two.

I should also probably mention that a few months ago I was on the highway and slowed way down to a stop at a tollbooth and a super intense rush of air happened and my brake pedal went right down the floor and then came up and was really hard to press. The brakes worked fine though luckily. This happened one more time a few minutes later. I took it to my mechanic and he said he could find no reason for this whatsoever and everything looked fine. The brake pedal never did this again.

Phew! Sorry for writing a novel here! I figure more information is better than not enough. I'd be so appreciative if anyone could give some suggestions. Thanks!

 

Ya know, if everyone who posted wrote it like you did...WOW would my job be easier!! SO, sounds like a vacuum loss maybe, and I'm not sure how VW's are, but if the rear brake is hot then you would have to adjust the brakes. How does your rotor look? If it feels like the brakes are on when you're not hitting the pedal, you would have to adjust them, that's on older cars so. As far as the pedal itself, it should connect directly to the booster through a linkage, just check that for anything out of the ordinary. If he changed the master cylinder and it's worse that's messed up..lol. Wonder how good of a brake bleed he did on the system?? WHat I would do is change the pump, might fix both problems....any dash lights ever come on during this??

 

I'm not sure how the rotor looks. I'll ask my mechanic to take a look because I'm not sure what would be out of the ordinary for a rotor.

No dashboard lights come on.

I'll make note of what you said about bleeding the system and checking the pump.

Thanks for the tips!

 

do you have any freeplay in the brake pedal
when you first press on it it should have alittle free movement before you fill it contact the master cylinder if you dont have this it will have your brakes on
and heats up the fluid and expands it to lock up the master cylinder worksin a crisscross patern one stage or piston runs front left and right rear
if the first piston is already geting pressure from the pedal it will act like your problem
and if it is now worse with the new m/c that makes sence ther is an adjustment on the rod inside the booster to make up for small diffrences in parts

 

I have a 97 jetta; 2.0L; 5spd manual; front disk brakes; rear drum brakeswith basically the same problem.

Everynow and then, it seems as though the brake pedal goes almost to the floor with little effort; then a few minutes later the brake pedal is so tight that i can barely press it down and it is very responsive. Also, twice now, i have been driving and the brakes are constantly applied slightly; i know this becuase my car sits still when i am sitting on a slight incline and slows down rather quickly if i try to coast in neutral.

i dont have a ton of money so i dont want to start replacing things. hopefully somebody can narrow this down for me.

please help!!!

 

Like said above, master cylinder would be the first part to change. There's an adjustment rod so just do that

 

Just wanted to update this thread to say that my mechanic thinks that in addition to the master cylinder that he already replaced, that the booster needs to be replaced too. I'll update this thread again when I know for sure that this was the problem. Hopefully this will help someone else some day!