Quote:
Originally Posted by dissimilation
It was tapping here and there, the grapevine is quite a massive slope with many turn offs for overheating uphill and many truck runaway ramps going down. I get about two hard brakings in before the vacuum needs to be recharged by the engine. I'm no stranger to braking without the assist of power through different vehicles I've driven over the years, so I didn't panic - but it did certainly get me nervous on something as treacherous as the descent of the Grapevine. Once the initial shock wore off, I turned back on the engine and realized the correlation to something that gave me braking power being charged when the engine was running (and read up to find the name of that something when I got home). I'm interested in seeing if there's a cheap way of putting a pressure meter in place to give me a good idea of what braking power I have.
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a vacuum gauge behind the vacuum check ball would allow you to see how much assist is left. While slightly more dangerous, you could pull your parking brake to stop(or slow) at times. dangerous part is 1. just using your rear brakes(which is what the parking brake engages) means that the rear of the car may lock up and get away from you and 2. forgetting to release the button may be suprising.