Welcome back to my short series on automotive how-to guides for the new weekend warrior auto mechanic. This is not for the professional auto mechanic, but for the average citizen looking to get their hands a little greasy on the weekends. In previous articles, we had covered many tools, but in today’s article I am going to cover what happens when you step on the brake pedal of your car. Brakes are probably the most important and yet overlooked safety item that your car might have. Without a proper understanding of what goes on inside your brake system, it can be difficult to troubleshoot any issues that may arise. So here we go, this is what happens when you step on the pedal.
-When you press the brake pedal, you press another piston in a cylinder known as the brake master cylinder. You can usually find it right in front of the driver’s side of the engine compartment against the firewall.
-When the master cylinder is pressurized, it forces the brake fluid into a distribution block depending on your car’s braking system. From there, the fluid is forced down a set of hard lines, one for each wheel.
-Each wheel will have a drum or disc brake. They serve the same purpose, but they work slightly differently. For the sake of simplicity, I will describe the disc brake that is most commonly found in today’s vehicles. Hardline brake fluid will force the caliper to squeeze a set of pads against what is known as a disc or rotor. This pressure slows down the speed at which the tires rotate and thus slows down the car.
-When you release the pressure from the brake pedal, the whole situation is reversed and the fluid returns to the brake master cylinder through the hard lines.
And there you have it. Now you know what happens when you step on the brake pedal.