Soft Brakes/ 80% pedal travel - Solved

So, here is a little back story. The past couple of weeks my trucks brakes have been acting a little weird. At times the brake pedal would be firm then at other times the brake pedal would sink 80% before actually stopping the truck. Well for a 2015 with only 35k miles it seemed odd that that would happen and it seemed symptomatic of air being in the brake lines. So, I bled the brakes and they were marginally better after what seemed like a small about of air coming out of the brakes. I kept driving it the next week and the problem seemed to still persist and after my wife drove it and got scared driving it we took it to the dealership to see what was up with it.

To put the prior maintenance in perspective; about 5k miles before the brake issue started I put a Bilstein 6112/5160 lift on the truck from Headstrong. I had no issues in those 5k miles except the needle bearing going bad, so I also replaced that with the clamshell bushing from ECGS.

So, the dealership tells me the rear drums need to be adjusted and cleaned out so they did that. Great, everything is fixed! Or so I thought. Everything wasn't fixed, it started to act weird pretty much immediately. But this time it's Sunday and the dealership is closed so I bring it to a local Firestone to see if they can diagnose the issue. They tell me that there might be some ABS errors but because Toyota has the ABS system locked down they cant get into it. On to the next day (Monday) back at the dealership I get another service appointment and they take another look. After having to leave it there overnight they get back to me the next day and let me know it is a bad wheel bearing and hub assembly and it needs to be replaced. They quoted $915 parts/labor/tax. Firestone got me at $470 Parts/labor/tax. So with the new wheel bearing and hub assembly install the issue was resolved. What was happening was the brake rotor was moving freely (left to right) inside of the brake caliper causing a delay in the brakes and my front left brake to basically be ineffective. Any ideas what might cause a wheel bearing to go bad at 35k miles?(Other than a bad part from Toyota) I know that the life span of those parts should be well beyond 35k.

 

Brakes

 

Yeah you're right...

 

The wobbling of the rotor was pushing the pistons back in the caliper. when you push the brake pedal down the pistons have to travel a greater distance before the pads contact the rotor. Basically you had to re-pump up the brakes every time you wanted to use them.

Glad you got it sorted. The dealer should be notified that they missed the bad wheel bearing.

 

This is wierd because I just replaced the wheel hub assemblies at 98k because of noise / vibrations. Well the hubs with new bearings fixed that issue but now I have a brake issue very similar to the ops. Pedal is soft on the initial push then fine after that. Drive a block or two down the road then same thing. Bled the front brakes to no avail? WTH