OK, so today is the big day; the day we go out for some of the muky stuff. So I load up the Jeep last night, get up at 4:30AM to meet with the rest of the group at 6:00AM about 45 minutes from here, get ready (the wife is coming too, but for a change, she's ready as well!), get on the jeep and head out the door.
We were going to a place a couple of hours from here that's suppossed to be muddy as heck! The idea was to come back tonight, but, because of the deep mud, everyone was bringing camping gear in case we had to spend the night. My rig and some sami's where the ones with the smallest tire size; the largest size of the group was 42's (the CJ7 with the CJ10 grilled I took pics of on the last trip we went - it did not come that time - was one of the rigs coming), and I had been warned to (1) be ready to winch, as even the larger rigs get stuck on the trail, and (2) take anything you dont want to get muddied off the rig (which I did, including the rear seat).
Anyway, after I left home, a couple of miles out, the Jeep feels a bit out of power. My first thought was that something was off with the FPR I had installed. In fact, I even got a CEL (turned out I had not installed the speedo gear correctly after changing the O-ring, so there was no speed signal; nothing to do with this!), but paying a bit more attention, it's not the engine; it's the brakes! AGAIN! When I tested it, and when I rolled out of the house, they were fine, but the more I drive it, the harder they are sticking. So i turn around, but the brakes keep biting down harder and harder.
I let them cool down a bit, so that I dont damage them, and after 30 minutes or so, I start driving home, but they are now bitting SO HARD that I need to drive in 4L just to be able to move forward. I thought it was the booster that somehow was getting more and more vacuum and thus was making the brakes stick stronger and stronger, so I disconnect the vacuum from the booster, but it does not fix or improve the situation.
What I did end up doing to be able to get back home is opening one of the fittings to release the pressure so that the brakes would allow me to roll home at least. Once home, I checked the front calipers thinking that they may be sticking from the chassis cleaning or mud runs we did last time, but they are not. My guess is that something is wrong on the master, but what do you think? I think I'll ask a mechanic to come home and check it here with me (dont want to let anyone running loose on my garage with all the stuff I got there!) so that I can finally get this repaired, but I am already PO'd that I could not go trail riding today. I was even packing 2 video camaras (that could shoot video) and 2 video cameras (that could take photos) as well as 2 phones that could do both (I even changed to my old phone, as that one has 8MP).
So, hopefully, I'll get this fixed and will be able to join up for another trail run before I need to take the Jeep back to Panama (at which time, the brakes HAVE to be fixed, as there is delaying the date I need to take the jeep out of the country!), but I am still kicking myself in the back for this!
Felipe
PS: I also DID try adjusting the rod that goes from the booster to the master, but to no avail... Any and ALL ideas on how to fix this are welcome!
