brake help please

[bails85]

ok so iput brand new brake system on my rig and it doesnt fell any different than it did with the old ones. changed master cylinder and power booster, front calipers,pads,rotors rear wheel cylinders,shoes and drums. damn thing still dont want to stop. i also bled the hell out of the thing. it feels like the damn brakes wont hit. i adjusted the rears and the e- brake feels good when i pull it but the fronts dont feel like they are hitting very well. any ideas?

[GP4Play]

Did you bench bleed the master cyl.?Were you getting fluid at the calipers and Rr cyl's when you bled it?

[Guest]

I had the same thing happen to my Avalanche this year. I did some reading and not all brakes pads are the same. Meaning some actually do stop better. So, I took them back to the shop and requested they put Napa's heavy duty towing pads (their best) on their. Guess what? Yep! Problem fixed. Even the mechanic said he laughed after I left the pads there to put on. He said I wouldn't see any difference, but even he was wrong! He couldn't believe the difference. He said he was blown away. He even went in the shop office and told the owner. I just smiled. Just a thought.

Footnote: Mine didn't want to stop neither. So bad, I actually almost hit a car on the 15fwy. I braced for impact as I almost hit the new 2009 BMW! Had it fixed the next day after I researched it.

Ron

[Jerry Bransford]

Could you have reversed the caliper assemblies left for right? When they're reversed, the bleeder is too low to get all the air out which of course will give crappy braking performance.

One pad sure to make a dramatic improvement in braking performance is the EBC Yellow Stuff pad. Blaine Johnson has done extensive brake pad testing and that particular pad blows the others away. I installed a set of them onto a friend's Rubicon and they made an amazing improvement in braking performance. They'll be my next pad for sure.

[XJ Fanatic]

What year xj? If its a pre-96 with the single diaphram booster it aint going to stop well.

XJs 93-95 with abs, and all 96+ had dual diaphram boosters easily id by the plastic res.

Also what size tires, stock axles I'd assume? The rear drums really don't help nor do the Ebrakes really hold with anything other than stock tires. I've been through this, I finally swapped in an 8.8 and with 31's it stopped great, 36's eh. With the d44 up front it stops alright but I could really use a dual diaphram booster with a larger master cylinder

[Jerry Bransford]

With the d44 up front it stops alright but I could really use a dual diaphram booster with a larger master cylinder

It has been found that lack of braking performance on our Jeeps isn't due to lack of brake line pressure. In fact, the real problem is a combination of the single-piston calipers that can't keep the pads flat under heavy braking pressure which reduces the available brake pad surface, and the brake caliper assemblies that warp under heavy braking pressure. Installing a more powerful booster makes those two problems worse while only giving a reduced pedal effort.

The real fix is to go to dual piston caliper brakes that keeps the brake pads flat and a beefed up caliper frame like VANCO sells as the "Big Brake" kit. You'll then find that you don't need a bigger brake booster/master brake cylinder that already puts out more brake line pressure than the OE brakes can handle.