Today after a short stop (15 mins or so) when i restarted the car and put it in gear (reverse), I was very shocked to find i suddenly had no brakes, I quickly put the transmision in park narrowly stoping just in time to avoid backing into a busy two lane highway! :eek: When I pulled forward back into the parking lot again no brakes and finally came to a stop, i got out car still running in park, and immediatly checked under the hood the brake fluid level. by removind the cap where you would add fluid. It was full. After reentering the card and taking it out of gear i again had brakes and was able to Carefully drive 15 miles home. Where I switched vehicles and continued on doing what i was doing (delivering papers). I of course will have the car checked out by a mechanic before driving it agian, but havint never had this happen before, and it was admittedly frightening! I would very much like to know what could have caused this to happen. the car is a 86 Honda Accord and was purchased used recently to do my paper route. any ideas would be a great help!
Sounds like your Master Cylinder went kablooey. Happened to me a few years ago on my LeBaron.
Mechanic time. Big time.
I won’t try to diagnose but was it difficult to press the pedal to the floor? If so it may be a vacuum problem. Was the pedal mushy? That may indicate air in the brake lines which wouldn’t have shown up as low fluid in the resivoir. Definately get it checked by a professional.
Pedal went ALL the way to the floor no difficultly at all in getting it there either, Yes I suspect the Master Cylinder too, But I was shocked that there was NO warrning, the brakes worked fine on my 50 plus stops up untill that point. I will for sure have the car looked at professionally before driving it again, thanks.
Sorry to be the bearer of more bad news, but if it is the master cyclinder there will probably be repair work needed on your brakes also. As the system gets older all of the parts wear out and aren’t working like new parts. When a new master cyclinder is installed it creates more pressure than your brakes are used to and they will most likely need to be worked on for this reason. 
It’s a virtual certainty it’s a brake master cylinder failure. I’d recommend replacing it whether or not the symptom can be dupicated by the repair shop. It will act up again, just as suddenly/randomly. Often a quick reapplication of the brake pedal (letting it all the way up first) will help, but you can’t count on it.
I have not observed the domino effect described by kniz relative to master cylinder replacement. I’ve seen something like it when only one wheel cylinder was replaced – you can pretty well count on its partner on the other side to fail soon. But I’ve replaced lots of master cylinders without seeing resultant problems elsewhere in the system.
This kind of thing absolutely should not happen; to have the brakes suddenly not work and the, suddenly work. Don’t let your dealer fob you off if the brakes have had no work done since the car was new. And I think it might be a good idea in that case to insist that the manufacturer be contacted or the US Product Safety people. And you might have to do that yourself.
If your brakes are all original equipment it could be a latent defect or design flaw.
It’s an 18 year old car exhibiting EXACTLY the symptoms one would expect of a WORN (not defective) brake master cylinder. There’s nothing mysterious or out of the ordinary here – quite the opposite, it’s fairly typical and quite well understood. What the hell are you carrying on about?
Gee, Gary, I didn’t mean to spoil your whole day. Would you like to lie down with a cold compress for a while?
First, I misread 86 as 96. Second, my grandson’s 85 Honda Accord has what sure looks like a dual master cylinder and if that’s the case it seems a little unusual that both would fail simultaneously. I also don’t think the symptom of self repair is very common.
But what the hell, we’ve got too many people anyway so who cares?
Dual master cylinder is a valid point. The brakes are designed to be relatively fail-safe.
Specialist investigation a priority I would say.
Or the brake lines just broke. One day about a year and a half ago I had my car’s brake lines go on me like that, and it felt very odd because it went to the floor so easily. I was able to stop, however, since I’d just put the car in reverse. Luckily, it happened while the mechanic’s for another problem! I’m so glad I no longer have that car… My only point is if it had just broken, it probably wouldn’t have affected the level of brake fluid in the reseivor yet. Either way, it sounds like you’re going to get the car serviced soon
Well i don’t think the brake line is broke. I drove the car 15 miles and it has set still for a day now and no puddle. It is odd they just quit and then seemingly worked fine, anyways will post when i can get a definate diagnosis, at the first of the week.
My 1987 Accord had a failure in exactly the same way, even though it was equipped with a dual master cylinder.
They aren’t supposed to fail in such a way as to leave you with no brakes, but it does happen. On mine, I believe something went wrong with the master cylinder piston seal for the rear brake chamber previously, but I never noticed the loss of braking action from the rear brakes (if there even was any). So I was unknowingly operating without redundancy for some time, until the seal for the front brakes failed and I was left with nothing.
Hmmm. I vaguely recall a car I had one time that had a differential pressure switch between the two parts of a dual master cylinder. When one of the duals didn’t develop pressure a warning light lighted on the dash.
However, I just checked the Owner’s Manual in my 2000 car and there is no indication that it has such a warning system.
It seems to me that this is a ‘must’ on dual brake systems. There should be a clear indication that the redundancy is no longer there.
Maybe the wage-paying, competition-driven, hard-driving, entrepreneurial, free-engerprise system will come up with one.
Volvo’s certainly had a pressure diferential warning on the 265’s of 80’s vintage.
I have a '96 Accord but never looked to see what all that shit under the bonnet is now. As long as it goes…
Before ABS brakes lots of cars had pressure differential switches. However once ABS came into play, pressure differential switches went bye bye. ABS works by delibertly modifying the pressure to one or more wheels. How could a simple switch tell the difference? Also ABS uses 3 or sometimes 4 circuits instead of two. Bottom line, no more pressure differential switches.
Unfortunately for me, my Accord didn’t have a warning light or ABS.
ABS brakes on Dodge are optional at extra cost. My Dodge doesn’t have them and it doesn’t have any warning system to tell the operator that one of the brakes systems is not working. This seems like a safety problem to me. Somehow I get the definite sense that the warning system was dropped as a cost saver. Do you suppose?
I’m a little surprised that the Owner’s Manual doesn’t recommend that I drop by my friendly Dodge dearly annually for a $150 dual-brake safety inspection.