Your brakes are probably the most important part of your car. If your car is having a braking problem, whether it’s weak brakes, a mushy pedal, grinding sounds – whatever your brake problem is, you need to troubleshoot and repair it as soon as possible.
Even though your brakes operate in a closed system, contaminants can still work there way into the system. Air can enter the system through the smallest hole, and you can end up with water in the system from condensation and other means. There’s not really any way to check for this, but bleeding your brakes will remove the bad stuff and replace it with new fluid.
Your brakes should never wear low enough to cause your brake pedal to feel low, they’ll scream at you before then. But if they do get very low, you might have this problem. Replace your brake pads as soon as possible. Of course, this can be avoided with regular brake inspection.
Finally, if your brake booster goes bad you’ll have low brake pedal issues. Most brake boosters are vacuum controlled, so a special vacuum measurement device that connects to the brake booster is needed to check it. If it’s bad, you’ll have to replace the boost unit.
