I have loved this car the last five years, I need it to last another year so I can haul materials to finish building a house in Northern Wisconsin.

My brakes have had a few issues. Two years ago they were making a slight squeaking noise and we drove 3 hours home and the calipers heated up and froze alltogether in the rear. We had to spend $2000 to replace everything in the rear.

A month ago I smelt brake pads heating up in the rear again. I replaced the caliper on the driver side that had a burning pad odor. That caliper was only two years old. We drove the car a month and all seemed fine. However, I have smelt the brake pad burning smell a few times again.

Now the brake pedal is very soft and needs to be depressed a long way before it has some effect. When I attached the new caliper the brake fluid was not a consistent color, I had to pump the brakes a bit to get clean fluid to push out of the open brake line.

What should I check next to decide what to replace next? A tech said he would replace brake lines, is there a way to determine if the issue is...

another caliper
hard brake lines
soft brake lines
master cylinder

Thanks
Christian

 

Just for brainstorming, are you sure it was the disc brakes that were giving you the burning smell and not the parking pads? When you replaced the rear caliper, was it actually frozen? I would assume that you would get an EPB failure warning if you had a stuck-on parking brake, but...?

To me, and I'm not a brake expert, squishy brakes says that you are not able to build full pressure immediately in the system. This could be caused by things such as: a) leaking hard line, b) bubble in rubber line, c) air in the system, d) fluid contamination.

First step would seem to examine the fluid level in the brake reservoir. Does it seem low? Even if it does not, I would examine the underside of the car for brake line leaks. The typically failure point on the LR3 -- this just happened to me last month -- is in the back half of the car where the lines go under the frame and then turn towards either wheel. If these are wet, you have found an issue (probably 'the' issue but...).
Second step: bleed the 4 corners and see if that improves it.
Third step: pull the rear rotors (remember to turn off the parking brake when turning the car off so you can pull the rotors) where you had repeat caliper freezes and just examine the rear pads. Does the rotor pull free easily or is one side of the car's parking brakes grabbing at it?

Others may have better ideas and more experience, that's where I'd start.

 

The parking brake seems to work just fine. I will work through those items and see what I can find out. Thanks for the flow chart. There is a brake line rebuild kit on amazon for about $40. Is that enough or would you use something more OEM?

Thanks

 

Atlantic British recommends replacing the rubber brake lines every 100k miles
Their kit is probably better (and more $) than the amazon route: ABP310SKA

 

I have seen some videos where people were using vacuum pressure to fill brake lines again, will I need a tool like that or can I simply pour fluid into the reservoir after the new lines are attached and pump brakes to get air bubbles removed?

 

Pressure bleeders speed the process but are not required. If you can't get the car all the way off the ground, one approach is to do it with the wheels on and the car in extended offroad height. From under the car you can access the bleeder screws with a 11 mm wrench. It's awkward and not as easy with wheels off, but you can access the bleeder screws. Have some vinyl tubing that fits over the bleeder tube and run it over the tire to a catch bottle that is above the bleeder screw height (e.g., rest it on the tire or hang it from a control arm). Because the drain line goes up, you will not have air bubbles when you are done and you can then just close the bleeder valve.

 

One can replace the rubber brake hoses with stainless steel braided ones from (at least) HEL Performance (in Europe). They’ll probably last forever.

You even get to choose the color, I chose red. After a few weeks of driving they were just as muddy/dusty as the previous ones 😂

 

On the actual brake pipes - don’t go to JLR to buy theirs. It’ll be the same s..tty metal the original ones were. They’re eventually going to rust through again. If you want to do it properly, copper-nickel-iron pipes are what you want. I guess this might depend on the locality as to what materials are allowed to be used as brake pipes. A good mechanic shop should be able to form, fit and flare them properly.

 

You can pump and bleed. Ideally you need another person to make sure the reservoir NEVER is without fluid and operate the bleed screw. Note that if the reservoir empties you will potentially have air in the ABS system and will need to bleed it properly with a tool (IID, SDD, etc.) that can command the ABS unit. Simply pumping the brake won’t work then.

 

$2k for new rear brakes? You had to have gone to Bergstrom, a dealer. Cause that is the only way to even get close to that price! Yuk! Anyway... I am guessing you have a leak as mentioned. Lots of good advice above. I recently replaced my rear lines. They were not leaking but I knew it would happen soon enough! So I got ahead of the issues and bought some really nice copper blend brake tubing and went to town on them. Took time, but was not hard to do. I will get a better bubble flare tool next time though... But as mentioned, check the brake fluid reservoir because if it is low, you have a leak. If not we need to look elsewhere for the issue.

Also not sure where in northern Wisco you are headed to, but I am in GB if you ever need advice.