Alan,

   You lost one of two circuits of your hydraulics. You have a leak
somewhere. Your shoes and pads may be perfectly fine except if they're
covered with break fluid. You need to find the leak and then fix it and
refill your master cylinder and bleed the whole system. If nothing is
obviously leaking then it's most likely the master cylinder.

Hope this helps
Joe Romas
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Bosch" <arbosch@RA.ROCKWELL.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2000 8:45 AM
Subject: Brake troubles - need opinions...

> List,
>
> On the way to work this morning, I stomped on the brake peddle, and rather
> than offering the smooth, steady, reassuring firmness of a functioning
> system, it is nothing short of mush.  Peddle was mush, with no stopping
> effort, to a certain point, about half-way thru the distance between
> normal, at rest position, and the floor.  It hesitated, like hitting some
> kind of stop, then pushed past thru until I could feel the brakes - only
> the fronts, based on a seat-of-the-pants evaluation - grabbed, and rather
> poorly at best.  Oh, yeah, the dashboard brake light, above the headlight
> switch, is on - like the hand break is engaged.
>
> From the feel of things, replacing pads, drums, rotors, calipers, wheel
> cylinders, may not cure the problem.  I'm only going to have one shot at
> repairing this between now and BBTT next weekend.  Thoughts and guidence
> welcomed, encouraged, and really appreciated.
>
> Alan Bosch
> & Phred ('88 Wolfsburg)
> Rochester, NY
>