Poor Braking Performance

I've had my 2nd gen since Feb. and haven't done a max performance test of the brakes till now--shame on me, I really think it's important to do in every vehicle you own. Better to know what to expect before shit hits the fan.
Anyway, I just did a brake job and my truck (rotors, pads, and even calipers because they all came in a kit together). This prompted me to test the braking performance and oh boy was I underwhelmed.

I did a few trials from 50-0mph. The best I achieved was 120 feet. The brakes have always been spongey and they don't feel substantially different, if at all, after the brake job. This leads me to suspect the brakes have always been this lousy.

At the point I chose to initiate braking, I smoothly applied full brake pressure, with the brake pedal all the way to the floor. I did a couple of trials, with ample time for the pads and rotors to cool in between. The ABS NEVER came on!

Is this normal behavior for this truck? Given that the sponginess of the brake pedal hasn't changed after the brake job, I'm going to venture to say that this is not a direct result of my work. I am rather confident that I did a thorough job with the brake bleed and other critical parts of installation. If you think otherwise, I'd be more than happy to entertain the idea that I f***ed up.

Ideas?

 

Lots of people complain, including me when I had stock brakes. Some keys are to flush out old fluid and make sure to beeps them once, twice, however many times it takes until you go insane in the membrane. Selecting good quality pads helps victims too. Just mentioning in another thread so what a coincidence but I’m a big fan of Akebono brand pads (they even make the Toyota OEM pads sometimes, either them or Advics). Good luck.

 

Thanks for the reply. I had bought a TRQ kit so idk what kind of pads they were. Maybe I'll go back and put some higher quality pads in. Still open to anyone else's inputs.

 

Your brake pedal should never go all the way to the floor no matter how hard you push it, if it does then either your rear shoes aren't properly adjusted, you have air in something, or pressure is bleeding off in either the master cylinder or ABS unit. 120 feet doesn't seem like too bad of stopping distance to me for a truck though.

The ABS won't kick in unless you lock up the wheels (which isn't all that easy to do on dry pavement) or it detects a panic stop (rapid application of the brake pedal) and the Brake Assist kicks in.

My truck has the hydraulic booster so I can't comment on the vacuum booster performance but I know mine will stop pretty quick and if the Brake Assist kicks in especially at low speeds it feels like you hit a wall.

 

My 2012 Tacoma AC TRD Sport was absolutely scary in a panic stop. Because it just kept going and going. I only had this truck 2 years and only about 40k on it. I narrowly avoided a wreck on the freeway in a panic stop where the truck just would not stop in what I thought should have been a reasonable distance. This truck did not have the brake boost system which I learned about after doing some research when I decided I was going to get rid of the truck.

I traded it for a 2015 Tacoma AC TRD Sport with brake boost. Night and day difference. The 2015 stops quickly and will activate ABS on dry pavement if I try hard enough, which is very rare. The only thing I didn't like about the brakes on the 2015 is the rotors seem to warp quickly (my fault due to driving style). A couple three years ago, I put rotors and calipers (new) from Toyota but 4Runner part numbers. Now I'm happy, and the truck is a keeper that I still have and plan to keep.

 

Get some decent pads, bleed the brakes again, bed them properly. Any brake pad that comes in a "kit" is typically a POS if the kit came from a no name budget supplier.

 

Aye, as @Dm93 said above, on the 2013-2015s (2.5 gens, TRD OR 4x4s only or all of them, idk?) the hydraulic booster system is more than adequate in my opinion. My truck is +1000 lbs overweight and I'm still happy with & confident in the brake performance.

 

Change the calipers to a good quality rebuild or find one from Toyota. Had the same problem, brakes didn’t feel right so put all new rotors, pads and Toyota calipers on. Truck has brakes now, so I decided to split the old calipers apart and remove the pistons and what I found is that even though you flush the brakes and bleed everything the front caliper outer pistons never receive new fluid. Mine contained black old fluid and black particles, the outer part of the caliper only has one hole for the fluid to go through so when you bleed them the fluid comes in the brake line on the inner side and goes out the bleed screw on the same side.

 

Believe it or not, check the adjustment on the rear shoes.

 

Worn wheel bearing in front will make calipers open more and mushy pedal
Booster not adjusted means not enough travel and mushy pedal
worn MC means not enough fluid and mushy pedal
old fluid can compress and mushy pedal
rears not adjusted make for more pedal travel
air in ABS will make spongey pedal

stock setup on my 2009 works great and can do the ABS shudder (fun in summer with a halter top on) with a 3500lb trailer hooked up

 

I'll do this first. Thank you. My parking brake is out of spec (too many clicks and even then barely holds truck). Sounds like poorly adjusted drums may be the culprit.