I recently purchased a B9 Tribeca I had it completely checked out, brakes, engine everything. Everyone told me it was fine, this past Friday/Saturday was our first freeze and snow. I went to get into the car around noon, so it had warmed up to maybe 40 by then, and I put my foot on the brake pedal and it didn’t feel right at all. Thinking I was imagining things I put it into reverse and took off the emergency brake, and realized rather quickly I had no brakes. quickly put it back into park and popped the hood. My brake fluid was full (right below the max line), I let the car sit there and pumped the brake pedal for like 2 minutes. After it made it all the way to the floor it eventually came back to where it should be and appeared to work just fine. I drove the car without any problems with the brakes for the rest of the day. My question is should I get the brakes checked out again, or is there something specific I should have them check so I don’t have to worry about the brakes next time it freezes.
at this point, your brakes working properly is a crapshoot.
for safety sake, get them checked out because it is unrelated to the temps.
brakes have been checked twice, they are fine.
Let me qualify that brake pads, shoes and all that stuff was checked out because I had squealing brakes, they said the pads were at 80% and everything else looked like it was good condition. So it’s not the brakes themselves it’s something else in relation to them. It is related to temperature because I’ve not had any problems the last couple of days that we have not had freezing temps
Have the master cylinder checked out. If you’re not leaking fluid, and you’re not losing it, the master is somehow emptying itself.
Does the ABS light on the dash work as it supposed to? Come on when you fire up the vehicle, then turn off after it has completed is diagnostics?
Do you have the maintenance records for this vehicle?
If so, can you verify that the brake fluid was changed at the 3 yr/30k mile maintenance interval?
If the original fluid is in there, it is possible that accumulated water in the fluid is causing some problems in the calipers when temps drop below the freezing point.
Thank you, I will see about the brake fluid, previous owners took it to Subaru and they have all the records so that makes it nice to be able to find out, if that’s not it I’ll get the master cylinder checked. Thank you very much