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Old 12-21-2006, 01:28 AM
jbach36 jbach36 is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Southeast
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Losing your assist is NOT like not having power brakes

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ara T. View Post
It does freak a lot of people out though, with good reason. The family of someone I used to go to HS with junked their late 70's 300D because it had a vacuum problem (maybe the pump was bad). He freaked out just like the poster did when his brakes lost assist.

My last summer job though I drove an old Ford truck around with no power steering and no power brakes, kind of makes you appreciate the things you take for granted in a car.
Eons ago, my sister had a '68 Chevelle. It had no power assist brakes. It's been years since I've driven a car without power assist, but they will stop with SOME pressure. My brakes were different. The pedal was just hard, meaning it wasn't going down even though I was pressing harder. It was eventually stopping, but certainly not fast enough. It is possible that if I were to drive around without power assist (which I'm not going to) that maybe I would get used to it, and be able to judge when to hit them in order to stop where need be. But based on that one, short incident, I pushed harder and the brakes weren't going down any more than they already did.

Jeff
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