Advice on Brake Booster Pump

i would wait until it fails to make the decision. could be years, who knows?

 

How many miles on the car and are you the type to drive the same car for a decade or more?
Because Gen3 have engine issues and don't last very long, but if you put a Gen4 engine in your Gen3 you'll be back to Toyota reliability for more than 300K miles.

Basically the brake booster, the engine and the hybrid battery are the 3 most expensive expected issues you'll pay to deal with in Gen3 if you're committed to owning it for one to two decades.

But if you go through cars quicker than that, then take the trade in value of it without fixing the brake booster issue and buy something better. If it wasn't for the Gen3 engine issues, I'd never recommend that.

 

Drive it till the lights come on and the brakes feel very different than figure out what to do usually you'll be buying the part that has the pump and the accumulator on it that does the pumping makes all the noise and has all the plugs going to it hence that's usually what puts the light on The master cylinder portion or the other portion up on the firewall can be also problematic but I think it takes a little more to put the lights on and it might be a different code usually with the mechanic stethoscope you can listen to each part with the car off and listen for leaking anything that's leaking down gets replaced the two parts could be about $1,500 if you could put them on for near no labor then you'd be in your price range. Garages will probably try and charge you $400 labor to install. And no telling if they have the capability to bleed.

 

Generally online from the largest Toyota dealer in your part of the country like here it's Rick Hendrick Toyota If I buy online I save almost $300 apart If I walk into the dealership they won't say anything and that part will be $300 more expensive especially for traction batteries and large items like transmissions big brake parts etc. I believe that is the part has all the electronics for the brake system on it predominantly other than your wheel sensors If you move over to the right a little bit the next part is more or less the master cylinder actuator I don't know whatever you want to call all these pieces but the piece on the firewall that the brake pedal actually is connected to I think is essentially like a master cylinder and a regular car You move fluid through it it gets to the piece with all the electronics on it and then the electronics multiply and do whatever with the foot pressure of fluid that you're pumping over there and takes over all by itself so I would think that main master cylinder on the firewall would be very rarely to be bad like on most cars the booster would go bad and all that other stuff but the master cylinder would be going for a long time generally speaking It looks very similar on my generation too It's basically a master cylinder fluid mover by the pedal pushing and that fluid goes to the thing that has all the electronics in the accumulator and the pump on it and then computers take over from there essentially and the Gen 3 they split this up a little differently but it's still very similar I would be generally speaking looking at the part that has all the electronics connected to it to me that seems sound. But again with a mechanic stethoscope which is like $9 at Walmart after shutdown you can listen to the part you're pointing at and to the master cylinder over to the right of that You could even have somebody sit in the car and just push on the brakes to listen to the master cylinder the part that generally you see no electronics is just silver fluid pumping device somebody push on that you listen to that see if any leaking or fluid movement can be heard while the pedal is pushed and not moving nothing there person off the pedal wait for car to go quiet listen to the part with the electronics You're listening for brake fluid movement within the accumulator and the pump and you'll hear it and if you do make it stop that's generally by changing that part.

 

I’ll tell you the real, some ppl here aren’t honest and just try to scare you.

Your brake booster is already failed and yes your brakes will work, it’ll just feel spongey, your abs will be disabled and your brake regen will be disabled. 95% chance you only have to change your booster, and not the booster AND booster pump. If you do it yourself the part is about $700. I’d install it myself.

 

Tombukt2's profile says a 2009 (Gen 2), and that is a better description of the Gen 2 setup than of Gen 3.

In fact, the brake system had substantial changes in every generation, and Gen 2 is the weirdest one (that is, the most different from all the other generations).

For a Gen 3, you've got these two things under the hood:



The top one, with all the lines connected, is a big combination of the electronics, the master cylinder, the booster, and the actuator.

The bottom one is a combination of the booster pump (notice the tricky names, there's both a "booster" and a "booster pump", and they're in separate parts, don't mix them up!) and the accumulator.

As BrianStranded suggested, there's a pretty good chance the problem is in that top unit. It can be in either one, but the top one has a lot more pieces that can start to leak, so if you just want to play the odds, that's the first guess to make. And happily, that's the easier one to change; the bottom one is in very tight quarters and kind of a challenging job. (When Toyota had a recall on that bottom unit, they went and invented several special tools just to make the access and replacement easier.)

After changing either unit, someone will need to do the complete bleed sequence through the car's computer, using either Techstream or another scan tool that can initiate it.

 

Yeah it's confusing I own both so there's that like I was saying the piece I would be looking to change is the one with all the electrical connection that has to capability to put on lights the part that's predominantly hydraulic only well not so much but I have to listen to it to see if it has leaks and if so then I'm on the hook for that but it looks like it seems to be it looks like it's usually the upper piece.

 

I have no suggestions as I’m in the same boat as you…my brake booster has failed lol. One of these guys on here will be able to help us. I just finished a headgasket job on mine, I’ll tackle my booster in September/October when I have time. Please update this thread with where/cost you purchased yours from plz

 

1 year.

How much was the used part?

 

The old ladies lighting the JBL solar roof 2010 has been on I don't know now for about 5 months No real change in breaking performance nothing what I will say and what she says is when it's raining or damp outside the lights on the dash go off like there's no brake problem at all vanishes. Then as soon as it dries up a little bit couple hours the light comes back on leaves me to believe there's something going on in this car besides the break actuator possibly because I don't really hear it running a lot not like it wasn't like '09 generation 2 It run half night it seemed. But even in that car brakes worked fine until all of a sudden just one caliper in the front was working that was fun

 

Its hard reading your posts bro. Just saying

 

Others have just said before.

 

Yeah it’s REALLY challenging trying to decipher what they are trying to convey without punctuation.

 

I was enjoying my mental picture of a bunch of old ladies shining lights on a 2010 solar roof though.

I modded mine so the solar roof helps keep the 12 volt battery charged. Have to rely on the sun though. Not enough old ladies with Klieg lights around.

 

How did you do this? I want to mod my solar roof for this. I appreciate the interior fan but I’d like more