So my Father has been asking me for a few weeks to take my Mothers car out for a drive because the brakes seemed a little off.
The car in question is a 2021 MG3 with 12,500miles on the clock. My Mother is a District Nurse so lots of short stop/start journeys that are quite hard on the car. She's not the most sympathetic of drivers either.
I took the car out for a drive and at slow speeds (up to 30/40mph or so) the brakes seem absolutely fine and perfectly adequate. However, I couldn't get the ABS to kick in at all when braking unless you absolutely lunged at the brake pedal at a very slow speed (sub 20mph or so).
When you start picking up speed the brakes get a bit weird. They brake to a certain point, but then you find no matter how much harder you press the pedal, the stopping power doesn't increase.
I took it out on a quiet and empty dual carriageway, accelerated up to 70mph and anchored on the brakes down to 20mph repeatedly for a few miles. That seems to have brought the brakes back to life quite a bit. By the time I got the car back to my parents house I could easily get the ABS to kick in at any speed.
I'm just wondering what happened? My only thought is that the brake pads had 'glazed' and couldn't create the necessary friction. Maybe I managed to clean this up a little bit with some heavy braking.
The car in question is a 2021 MG3 with 12,500miles on the clock. My Mother is a District Nurse so lots of short stop/start journeys that are quite hard on the car. She's not the most sympathetic of drivers either.
I took the car out for a drive and at slow speeds (up to 30/40mph or so) the brakes seem absolutely fine and perfectly adequate. However, I couldn't get the ABS to kick in at all when braking unless you absolutely lunged at the brake pedal at a very slow speed (sub 20mph or so).
When you start picking up speed the brakes get a bit weird. They brake to a certain point, but then you find no matter how much harder you press the pedal, the stopping power doesn't increase.
I took it out on a quiet and empty dual carriageway, accelerated up to 70mph and anchored on the brakes down to 20mph repeatedly for a few miles. That seems to have brought the brakes back to life quite a bit. By the time I got the car back to my parents house I could easily get the ABS to kick in at any speed.
I'm just wondering what happened? My only thought is that the brake pads had 'glazed' and couldn't create the necessary friction. Maybe I managed to clean this up a little bit with some heavy braking.