Been a hoot the last couple of weeks with my '05 Tacoma. Two Sundays ago was getting ready to go to the coast for a week, truck loaded down with all supplies. The week before decided to have the u-joints and center bearing replaced, center bearing was worn out and you could move the driveshaft about 1" or more up and down. Took it to a local driveline shop. I purchased the truck new, now has about 126k miles.
Heading to the coast, on the road 30 min, brake light comes on, stop to check fluid, was low of course. Thought that was odd, when I stopped to get fluid, I looked at all 4 wheels to see if anything was wet, nothing was, so I drove on to the coast. Out on a major highway going about 60-75mph noticed a new humming sound and felt a vibration, dang driveshaft I thought.
Just as I was pulling into the rented condo, the light came on again (about 3 hour drive). After driving around the coast a bit, ended up putting 2 1/2 8oz cans of brake fluid in, but it got me home. Brakes still worked pretty good.
Troubleshooting found an internal leak to the master, and yep, all that fluid I put in was going inside the booster, almost to the point of leaking out. Off to parts store to order stuff. The next day parts came in, of course the wrong master was in the correct box (O'Reillys). Kept the booster and went to NAPA to get a master, had to wait another day. Got the master and had trouble bleeding. The only thing I could figure out was probably had air in the ABS unit. Still had a mushy pedal.
So knew I had to activate the ABS, so was thinking of going to the Toyota dealer to get it bleed (they have some type of scan tool). Then read on the Tacoma world forum where you could drive on a dirt road and hit the brakes hard multiple times to active the ABS. I did this and re-bleed the system.
Finally good brakes again................
Now for the driveshaft, took it back to the driveshaft shop and had it balanced, now vibration/noise free......whew! what a week.
