Is there any upgrade out there to get rid of the TL mushy brake feel. i already have ss brakelines, is it the master cylinder or booster that make it this way? i want a more aggresive brake feel. is this achieavable in our cars?

 

how many miles are on your current brake fluid?
drain and fill with DOT 5.1.

for what its worth, I never have a mushy feel.
a slight tap of the brake pedal and the car significantly slows.

 

i might have only 1000km on new fluid but its dot 3.1 oem stuff

would changing to dot 5.1 be that significant of a change in feel?

 

I dont know, as i have two bottles of 5.1 sitting on the shelf at home.

it sounds like something is wrong, I dont have a mushy feel and I have the brembo's as well with SS lines and slotted rotors.

Maybe you need to re-bleed.

 

I agree about the mushy break feel, even with my brembos. Its not that the brakes are weak, they just have a mushy break pedal compared to other cars like lexus and bmw, where the slightest tap of the break engages the breaks a lot more. I dont know how to make it less mushy though

 

Mine are on point.....?

How many miles has it been since a drain and fill?

 

Did the mushy pedal feel occur before or after the brake line install? If the pedal was mushy after the lines then the system probably wasn't bled properly. If it was bled properly the brake pedal should be mushy. Brake fluid does absorb water over time so it's important to flush the system every 30k miles or 2 years.

It is possible that your Master Cylinder is bad but unlikely. See if you can drive another Acura with Brembo calipers to see what their pedal is like.

 

it is unlikely that the MC is bad.
I had a bad MC.
my brake pedal went straight to the floor.
you can read about it here:
https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-problems-fixes-114/brake-check-808641/

 

my brakes have been this way as far as i can remember

 

^well, try re-bleeding.
the only way to figure out your problem is to trouble shoot and eliminate each factor that contributes to a mushy feel.

I would re-bleed.
if that didnt help, i would then change fluid, and bleed.
if that didnt help, I'd be looking into the MC or the SC.

 

I just did my whole system over, rotors, pads, ss lines, motul rbf. It is extremely solid. But, it was mushy after the first bleed. I did it wrong. Rebled, bam, bites like a mofo barely hitting the pedal.

 

I have that same mushy feeling on my 06 TL non~navi Canadian Automatic, who is also looking for a way to link an iPhone4 to the factory deck....

I also have a tone of brake dust that comes with that mushy slow stopping feeling.

I'm looking to fix these issues as well.

 

My brake feel is very aggressive....

If your brake feel is mushy, you gotta bleed your brakes...seems like you have air in your system....

 

id rebleed your brake system first.

 

First off, I never drove a TL brembo, I just have the base 07 TL.

but my old SRT8 brembo (4pot monoblock front, 4pot 2piece rear), the car did not stop at the tap of the brake (probably because it's over 4000lbs) but what mattered to me was, linearly progressive braking.

say, if i tap the brake, the car should only hesitate to stop.
but when i squeese the s**T out of that pedal, it stopped on a dime.

So, just my opinion, try braking with your LEFT foot and if it dives into the road, it's good

It's just me, I don't like it when i "tap" the brake during high speed cornering, ABS ABS ABS, no, i want progressive 0 to 100% scale

 

My brembos are linear but I still do have pedal feel...not a mushy one though...it takes quite a bit to get my abs to kick on. I think I have only used it once when i hit a patch of ice...which was useless. But I repeat as others have said rebleed it. I had motul rbf600 in mine but I replaced it temporarily with dot3 to flush out the whole system...will be picking up another batch soon.

 

I agree on re-bleeding the brakes. Mine haven't been bled for about 40k miles from what I gather of the service history (thankfully the previous owner had the dealer do everything so I've got a full service history which is worth $$ all by itself). I've had the car for only about three months though but I plan on doing a flush real soon. Is there any consensus on what is the best BF? Or am I opening a can of worms on that one?

FWIW the Brembo's are kind of squishy on mine too. Could be they've absorbed moisture over the years, I don't know. If anyone has any suggestions on brake fluid I'm all ears as I'll probably be doing this next weekend.

 

Motul 5.1
Motul RBF600
Castrol SRF
Genuine Honda

 

I like the RBF600 I havent had much issue with it and it holds up to daily driving and occasional track runs.

 

dont get me wrong here dude....am all for using premium fluid but all of those you mentioned are for track use....

I use vavoline dot 3 and 4....its cheap and it does the work....great for highway/city use....32oz for $7.50....

http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/web...T|GRP2008_____

other fluids that you mentioned sell for $20 for 12oz + shipping....

 

I get a discount on my purchases since I work with a dealership so I dont have to pay 20 or so bucks for it.

 

I was doing a lot of research into SS brake lines today to maybe stiffen my brake feel up and possibly make the response a bit quicker. Whether this is all in the head or not I do not know. What I do know is that there is a very significant population of people out there who highly DO NOT recommend SS lines as they tend to burst. These are coming from mostly tracker's and rallying folks with EVO's and STi's but the point is, it can and does happen. For them they treat the lines like tires and change them every other race. As for daily driving maybe it's just not worth it. They look cool but I had a line burst on me once when I was in high school and I damn near shat myself before I got my car under control and stopped. I don't want to have that feeling again. If anyone knows of something "in the middle of the road" between SS brake lines and OEM lines I'm curious. I've heard of some that are OEM but have a type of braiding on them to help prevent the balloon effect under pressure. Also, FWIW, Ferrari and Acura NSX's do not use SS lines from the factory. Probably a good reason for it.....

 

what diy steps did you follow when you bled your brakes? i re-bled my lines and theyre still the same as before.

 

I am having my brakes flushed and bled tomorrow. $30
I will report my findings

 

to SS lines and Valvoline DOT 3&4....

flush it out and you will feel the difference right away....make sure its bled right and have decent pad/rotor life...

 

Are you saying I'd be all good getting SS lines? Or not? I really want them. I'm also looking into the Valvoline 3&4 right now....good for 480F. That's pretty good for $7.99

 

So you can mix dot 3 & 4, or is one recommended over the other... I need to bleed my system as I saw water floating in the fluid when I did my rotor replacment.

 

Dot 3. Dot 4. and dot 5.1 are compatible with our cars. you should not mix them.

DO NOT USE DOT 5!!!!!!!
it is silicone based and will eat the rubber seals inside the braking components.

 

^^^ Honestly, I had ss lines on another vehicle and I didn't notice that much of an improvement at all, everything was bled properly with regular dot 4 fluid. Maybe a hair firmer but not that much of a difference.

 

the only time you're supposed to feel the SS lines is in repeated braking applications. for example the track.

Under hard and repeated braking the rubber lines expand causing a fade feeling. SS lines will not expand like rubber, there fore no fade.

 

 

Very well said bro

 

Sometimes, people notice a firmer pedal right off the bat but that is because their fluid had absorbed enough moisture to make the pedal feel mushier. But the advantage of stainless steel brake lines doesn't come about until after you've heated up the brake fluid. Rubber expands; the stainless steel lines do not.

 

I felt an improvement over the rubber stock lines but then my car had 140,000 miles on it when I changed them over. Brembo's have a specific bleed pattern you follow starting with the passenger front which threw me off completely and going clockwise as I recall. You do the outer nipple first also then the inner on the brembos. I will have to recheck it has been a while.

 

OP, Definitely sounds like there's air in the system. Try a proper bleed of the system and that should fix any mushiness barring any mechanical problems.

That said, brakes (stock brembos) feel solid and linearly responsive in my TL, 68k miles.

 

Had my system flushed and bled today. No difference noticed, but there was no problemto begin with