brake pedal travel & force

Yoyizit

An indep. garage replaced my brake fluid along with a new master cylinder and right rear wheel cylinder, in 4.5 hours. That's probably as long as it would have taken me to do it.
It's a '94 Honda Civic 3D HB DX with 62,000 original miles on it.

The pedal wasn't nearly as high or as hard as I expected. I don't want to go back to that place.

Anybody have specs on this? The factory manual didn't.
Here's one person's guidelines:

"
(1) Inspection procedures. With the engine running on vehicles equipped with power brake systems, and the ignition turned to “on” in other vehicles, apply a force of 125 pounds to the brake pedal and hold for 10 seconds. Note any decrease in pedal height, and whether the lamp illuminates.

(c) Brake pedal reserve. When the brake pedal is fully depressed, the distance that the pedal has traveled from its free position shall be not greater than 80 percent of the total distance from its free position to the floorboard or other object that restricts pedal travel.
"

Haven't done the 125 pounds yet but the pedal does not continue to sink under my foot. I guess I could ask the MD DMV for their particular specs.

oldrivers

when replacing brake components its not uncommom for the pedal to be a little low until everything re adjusts itself , you could try slowely pumping the brakes a few times to get the pads shoes to readjust .. take up the slack that was reset when removed. slack is the distance betwenn the pads /shoes to the rotors/ drums that will slowely become less and less as you use your brakes meaning less pedal travel.

Yoyizit

Thanks for your reply.

I thought the free play was out of spec but it probably isn't, and it turns out that the pedal 'feel' in my 2003 truck is not much better than in this Civic.

I e-mailed MD DMV and we'll see what they say. If necessary I'll measure the pedal force with a bathroom scale.

Maybe the hard and high pedal I got once was an unusual occurrence, and the vehicle didn't have a brake booster.

BryantS

I think that when they did your brake job that they some how didn't get all the air out. Sometimes when replacing either wheel cylinders or calipers or just anything in the brake system for that matter sometimes it traps fluid. If you where getting a sinking pedal I would lean toward a master but since you say that it doesn't sink it just feels poorly maybe there is still air in the lines. How far does your ebrake handle come up when pulled. Maybe they need to adjust your shoes. Not all rear shoes have self adjusters on them. We are assuming that they bench bleed the master cylinder and that might not be accurate. If you have help then you and a friend can bleed the brakes. If you have access to a jack AND STANDS then you can pull the rear drums off and adjust them. Or find a shop that you trust and let them do it.