Brakes!! please help :(

Imagine you drilled a tiny hole in your brake pipe. If you pressed your brake it would work fine to begin with and then slowly the peddal would go down as the fluid leaked.

My panda is doing this!! The peddal slowly goes down *takes about 3 seconds) *BUT* once i let go of the brake its back where it should be again until i put pressure on it o.O

My question: does anyone know whats causing this?? I'm desperate to fix it as i'm off to slovakia in three weeks in my car. I noticed theres a fluid pool under the bonnet thats not under pressure or anything, so logically there must be a one way valve for the fluid pool, am i right? Could it be this is letting fluid flow back into the pool?

My panda is a 1993 fire.. it doesn't have a servo.

Please help me.. mrooo

Hi Jaff, take off the wheel and have a look at the brake caliper, it may just be the bleeding nipple that is loose, failing that, check the rubber hose that connects in there for tightness and leakes, hope that helps.

Thanks for the reply! Yes, i'm going to pull the brakes apart tomorrow.. just an addition to the above: There is no fluid leaking from the system, something else more strange is going on

Hi Jaff, This sounds like you need to replace the rubbers in your brake's master cylinder.

gahh! It doesn't do it most of the time, just randomly!! *sigh*
I pulled my break system apart last night, new fluid etc.. has not done it again *yet* i'll have to see..

It might just have been some air bubbles in the system then.

Hi Jaff. My panda was doing exactly the same before i rebuilt the brakes. With all the slave cylinders replaced pedal still sank after couple of seconds and no amount of bleeding helped. I got a scrap pandas master cylinder for a fiver works fine. Its dead easy to fit a couple of nuts hold it on. Just get any scrap panda stamp on the brakes if they dont sink master cylinder is fine. Best O luck

Thanks although the brakes seem fine now which adds more weirdness to all of it, i don't think it was air in the system as this would cause unfirm 'squishy' brakes.. no, this is/was something odd.. I'll change the master cylinder if it returns but i doubt it will happen before i drive to slovakia! *holds breath*