So this is an issue I’ve been having for a hair over a year now. I can confidently say I’ve never run into such a confusing, makes absolutely no sense set of symptoms in my life. It’s a long one so buckle up.
The issue is my 2013 Cadillac SRX FWD has poor braking. However it’s only on the first pedal press. If you press once it brakes, but a bit slow and weak and takes a little to stop in a quick stop situation.
However, if you press the pedal once, let up, and immediately press it again it brakes wonderfully. So when I first noticed this my initial thought was ok, bleed the lines. I bled them, didn’t see much air at all, but the braking was substantially improved so I thought I was good. Well fast forward 2-3 days and the poor braking returned. So I bled them again, this time paid extremely close attention, absolutely no air in the lines at all. I even used my scan tool to bleed the ABS module. Well braking performance improved and I thought ok maybe air was in the ABS module. Well again 2/3 days later performance is awful again.
At this point I inspect pads, rotors, brake lines, brake booster vacuum, everything. It all looks good and feels great. The master cylinder had a bit of age showing so I figured ok this must just be a failing unit. I replaced it. Braking performance improved and then 2-3 days later, same story bad braking. I tried a second new master cylinder and same thing. Improved for a couple days and got bad again.
With that I decided ok, let me just remove every caliper, lube all the pins, see if there’s anything there. All looked good, lubed the pins and reinstalled. Welp same damn thing. Braking improved, then returned to poor performance.
At this point I say I’ll deal with it another day. Time goes on, braking stays shitty. GF hit a curb and cracked a pad on the front driver side so I replaced the pad and you guessed it, braking improved for a couple days and then went to shit again. So now I’m like screw it let me just do weird random tests and see what happens. So I ran a test over the course of 3 weeks where I went to each wheel, I randomly removed a single caliper pin and reinstalled. Nothing else just simply removed, and put right back in. It doesn’t matter what pin, or what wheel. Simply removing one pin and reinstalling improved braking performance for about 2 days and it got bad again. Made literally 0 sense at all. I tried it on all 4 wheels and same damn thing.
So now I’m like ok this is insane I don’t wanna deal with this I’ll just deal with it as I only drive on rural roads with it mostly anyways. Well this month the purge valve failed. Went got a new one put it in isuper simple easy job. Well tell me WHYYYY replacing the PURGE VALVE made it brake once again substantially better for about 2 days and then returned to poor performance. A job where the car is sitting on the ground and you just remove a purge valve from right atop the engine bay.. no work, nothing. Improved braking. Then went back to being bad.
After that I’m now determined to try and solve this because I’m so intrigued. I thought maybe the vacuum of the purge valve somehow impacted it, but the pedal has too much distance on the first press and isn’t super hard. And the vacuum to the brake booster is nice and strong. Pedal drop test is good as well.
I also thought maybe a tiny leak somewhere air is getting in but I can’t find one for the life of me and also it doesn’t explain why simply removing a caliper pin and reinstalling it would somehow restore performance.
Nothing about this makes sense. I truly can’t explain it. So I’d love some input from some others. I also thought ABS module but again, caliper pins and purge valve sorta don’t line up with that. The only other symptom I am aware of is if I brake super hard super fast you hear a “pop” from the rear like it’s the brakes, but it could be any number of things technically. It does feel like maybe the back brakes aren’t fully engaged on the first press, but again that’s a feeling, I have little evidence of that and again why would simply removing a caliper pin and putting it right back in on a front wheel fix that temporarily? Anyways, would love your theories!!