Brake pedal goes to floor

Today my pedal went to the floor. What a suprise on the way home from Kelmarsh.
What could be the problem, not had time to have a look

Try the brake fluid reservoir & see if it has fluid & check for leaks (everywhere)

If it has fluid you might want to have the boiling point of the fluid checked as its hydroscopic
check the rubber flexi pipes for wear ie cracking.

Vehicle age type last time fluid changed any leaks colour of fluid the list goes on ...more info needed...just spent 2 hours bleeding clutch on my 101fc control after fitting new cylinders got push rod miss placed on clutch fork due to po not fitting rod catch correctly...it's all fixable though...

Mantegna said:

Today my pedal went to the floor. What a suprise on the way home from Kelmarsh.
What could be the problem, not had time to have a look

Click to expand...

youve lost your fluid,rotten pipes behind wheel arch liners is common

Could also be a pin holding a shoe on the rear has let go... the shoe shifts off the cylinder and the fluid escapes.

Its a not unusual reason for this reported on here for Freelander.

Mantegna said:

Today my pedal went to the floor. What a suprise on the way home from Kelmarsh.
What could be the problem,

Click to expand...

It's got a leak in the system and a big one at that. You'll need check the entire system for leaking pipes or a GG said, the rear shoes. If it suddenly went to the floor, it's nothing to do with age of the fluid or it's colour. The fluid has been let out the system from a sudden failure somewhere.

Looks like rear cylinder as fluid all over wheel. Good newa i think

Mantegna said:

Looks like rear cylinder as fluid all over wheel. Good newa i think

Click to expand...

It's surprisingly common and caused by corrosion and lack of PPM. One of the shoe retainer pins has likely rusted enough to snap, allowing the shoe to slip off the wheel cylinder piston, which then pops out of the bore. You'll need to replace the wheel cylinder, the shoes and get a complete hold down kit. Do a correct and full rebuild on both sides and replace the drums too if they're worn. You'll find the brakes will work loads better, after a full rebuild.

Mantegna said:

Looks like rear cylinder as fluid all over wheel. Good newa i think

Click to expand...

Its because of reports like this that when my rear brakes needed replacing earlier in the year I replaced everything that attached to the hub - cylinders, shoes, drums, pins and springs. You can actually order the LR part pins and springs - they have their own part numbers. The whole lots was quite cheap, although shipping those drums over here to NZ wasn't! The only bits I didn't renew were the adjusters.

Its a quick job to replace everything, but you have to take care that you've assembled all the bits correctly and do have to do a good bleed on the system obviously. A good tip I got was to take pictures once you take the old drums off so that you can see how things all go together - it is not necessarily obvious and plenty of people have assembled the brakes how they think they should be but have got it arse about face (which you don't know until you've done all the work, bled the system and the brakes won't work!)

I forget which brand of shoes I ended up with, the drums were AllMakes (on Nodge's recommendation), cylinders OEM and the springs/clips were LR.

If your car is a YA car yo to 2000 I can let you know the part numbers I used, but if its later than that they will be different. I used www.lrdirect.com and the parts arrived here in NZ inside a week. I then had to wait another week for the right shoes to arrive!

Luckily my car has lived its whole life in NZ, so looks virtually new underneath. UK cars having had to put up with 20 years of salt eating them away will usually need the copper pipes from the cylinders to the flexihoses replaced - they are destroyed when being disconnected from the cylinder. These short pipes do add a rather disproportionately high overhead to the cost of replacing the brakes. Whether you order them with the other parts or only if the old ones are broken when disconnecting them depends on whether you can be without the car for the length of time it takes to get them - although for UK cars it is probably advisable to replace them anyway.

Brakes all sorted now, Will be keeping a better eye on my brake fluid from now on. Replaced master cylinder reservoir and level sensor as it should have shown a low level, this would have gave me some idea that there was a problem

Mantegna said:

Replaced master cylinder reservoir and level sensor as it should have shown a low level

Click to expand...

I can't see a reason to replace any of those items, as the leak was a sudden loss of fluid from the rear.
But if you're happy to replace them, that's up to you. At least it's sorted now.

I would like to add that there doesn't have to be a sudden or gradual loss of brake fluid for the pedal to go to the floor.
I was on a couple hundred miles motorway drive to the Welsh mountains. One of the brake pad springs was rusted through and snapped into two pieces which caused the pads to bind against the disc. I was in the middle of nowhere and had to drive up and down several mountains to reach my destination. The pads stank from overheating and there was smoke and a lot of heat build up. The brake fluid basically boiled and the pedal hit the floor, no brakes. There was no loss of fluid until I removed the master cylinder reservoir cap. The boiling fluid poured out. Not a huge amount but enough to make a mess. I waited about an hour for the front near side brake assembly and fluid to cool down. Luckily there was enough fluid remaining in the master cylinder to have a hard pedal and I managed to limp to my destination.

jamesmartin said:

youve lost your fluid,rotten pipes behind wheel arch liners is common

Click to expand...

This...

Or another favourite rot-spot for the brake pipes is in the engine bay, where they run down from the ABS modulator over the top of the "chassis rails", just under the track rod ends.

Jayridium said:

This...

Or another favourite rot-spot for the brake pipes is in the engine bay, where they run down from the ABS modulator over the top of the "chassis rails", just under the track rod ends.

Click to expand...

Yes, I recently replaced my brake pipes and they were crusty exactly where you say. The clip mounting the two rear pipes to the chassis rail is a muck and moisture trap.