Hi everyone. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Over the past month I started hearing my brakes grinding. My husband changed the rear pads on Sunday and test drove it and said it was fixed. On Sunday night I drove it and the pedal went almost to the floor. I told my husband, who doesn't know much about cars, and he said, "I don't know why. I just popped the old ones off and popped the new ones in like I did with the other car." Now I'm not sure if the brakes were really fine when he test drove it or not. He's not very intuitive when it comes to noticing problems on the car. So anyways, I googled it and saw a few thing. One was that the brakes would need to be pumped a few times before driving, and that if you push the pedal to far to the floor it will break some master cylinder seal or something. My 1st question is, since my husband test drove it without pumping the breaks, is it possible he pushed the pedal to far when stopping and broke the seal? I tried lightly pumping the breaks a few times today to no avail. I also read from googling he problem that if the rotors are worn then it might take a week ro two for the pads to settle in. I'm assuming my rotors are worn a little since I actually heard the grinding noise, but just 'waiting a few weeks' seems way to easy. Could this really be all I need to do? I just want my brakes back to normal and know my husband won't be able to figure it out! It's scary when I need to suddenly stop or stop on the highway and my pedal goes almost to the floor! Please help!
Thanks!
-Cindy

 

It is usual that after changing pads to have to pump the pedal a couple of times to get the brakes to work, but this only needs to be done once.

If the pedal is going to the floor all the time then that means either there is a leak of the hydraulic brake fluid, very low hydraulic fluid level or most likely the brake pads are not fitted correctly.

Put simply the way the brakes work is that you press the pedal and that squeezes hydraulic fluid down the brake pipes to each of the wheels where other pistons then squeeze the brake pads against the brake disc (rotor). Normally the point the brake pedal goes hard is when the pads are fully squeezed against the rotor, the fact that your pedal is going to the floor and that you are not stopping is because the hyrdraulic fluid is not able to squeeze the pads against the discs because it is finding somewhere else to go.

Regards
Richard

 

Ok I will tell my husband these things. Thank you!

 

what kinda car are we talking about any way?