B190 Enthusiasts

I am not a great Tech writer but thought i would share a little about some brake issues I had on my 94 with 46K on the clock.

I had some mild wobble in the steering wheel and floor boards when I applied my brakes. I noticed it but others did not seem to.

Pulled the wheels found a small crack in one rotor pass side, the crack was not the normal cracks you see in the center on the rotor. This one was on the edge all the way through the outer surface.

So I decided to check the runout and found 0.8 out, Ford spec i think is .06 which IMHO is huge. .08 was enought to feel it.

New rotors bearing and seal from raybestos set me back $375.00 in parts and 3 hrs of my labor, pretty easy job.

I put about 30 miles on it with zero issues and the wobble when I used the brakes was gone.

OK so my son and I driving maybe 10 miles and my brakes started to fade and smoke was puring from the left front wheel?

We stopped, let it cool and went home, the van pulled hard to the right by the time we got home.

I pulled the wheels and found the caliper had hung up!! Reason: new pads put the piston back in to bore were it must have had some corrosion and caused the piston to jam.

200 bucks and some Raybestos calipers, all seems to be fine.

I am not all that happy with the brakes in these vans, i have a late model 1 ton truck that has awesome brakes, disc in the rear is huge and I may some day look into adding them to my B190. The brakes do the job in the van but IMHO are just on the weak side seeing the vans are near 10k pounds.

For the most part my van works as new, very tight steering and suspension, although worthy of a few upgrades in my future.

Enjoy, Denco

yep....installing new pads which pushes the pistons back into an area of the caliper that hadn't been used for some time can often create the problem you just had.

Thanks for all your recent post Denis... !

Denco wrote:I am not all that happy with the brakes in these vans, i have a late model 1 ton truck that has awesome brakes, disc in the rear is huge and I may some day look into adding them to my B190. The brakes do the job in the van but IMHO are just on the weak side seeing the vans are near 10k pounds.

I'm with you. I think there are a couple factors, such as the weight, but also "that's how vans/trucks were made in the 90s" - it seems like Ford, Chevy, and Dodge didn't quite "get" that truck owners would like to have good brakes and a stiff chassis and brake controllers and all that until the late 90s-early 2000s. I remember being floored at how solid a 2005 F-150 felt compared to my '91 full ton B190.

That said, I don't think my B190 is underbraked (I've driven much, much worse) - just that more wouldn't hurt.

1991 B190 Original Hyd. Brake cylinder is not avail. in its original config. The original config had the larger hole toward the radiator and smaller hole toward the fire wall. If you buy a rebuilt or new one from auto after market the fittings on ends of the steel tubing will not match up (front one will but back one will not). After two installs with the wrong ($45 & $65 each) Parts I called Ford and got the right one for $131.00. But it was the exact same part as the previous two only FORD put a NAPA Adapter (called a DOT inverted flare adapter) so the fittings up front would fit into the hdy cylinder). I checked all the drawings at Autozone and Oriely's -
all showed the wrong holes but none made reference to getting an
adapter. After I tried to educate an Oriely conter person the middle line manager walks up and says "OOO I know all about that you should have asked me !!!!! A 2 day job at most turned into a 7 day job and $70 more for a fitting from Ford that I could have gotten at NAPA for $5. Keep your old hyd cylinder and take to the store to check ports and fittings to get the right one. Do not turn in for core charge refund until the job is over.