Please help, proper scary, without any warning my brakes on my 2003 L&K tdi estate go absolutely rock hard, making stopping very interesting!! seems to happen more frequently in the wet, but you can drive for hundreds of miles between fail events, local garage has had a good look and cannot see anything wrong. Any help greatly appreciated, I think at 175,000 miles its becoming a FORD(fix or repair daily)

 

Cheers

Stephen

I would say the vacuum pump is at fault or a pipe from it to the servo.

Hope that helps?

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Or the servo itself.

 

I'd start by investigating the vacuum pipe since that's the cheapest part.

Split vacuum pipe somewhere. Tricky to pin down as the braided pipes split under braid, & visually look ok. Easiest to buy some vacuum pipe from a motor factor, & replace them all. There are some T pieces that can split too so check them.

Edited 26 February, 201511 yr by pauldazzle

Mine had a split vacuum pipe when I got it. There was a recall on early mk1 models but I wonder if it was really fixed for mk1s produced after this date...

 

http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosa/apps/recalls/searches/expand.asp?uniqueID=6FC3E486C032E8D500256CDA0045B061&freeText=Blank&tx=

Really does sound like a vacuum pipe. I had this on a Fabia, scared the living daylights out of me. Tape up any splits in the pipe(s), as a temporary measure until you can get the new pipe. Gaffer tape does the job well.

As its a TDI, this could be down the the vacuum pump as the servo doesn't use manifold vacuum to provide assistance.

The rigid section of of vacuum pipe split near the vacuum pump end on mind...