Brake Failure

Clogman said:

Hi there,

This is Paul who made the original post. Thanks for sharing your experience. I know its a shock when it happens. This sound exactly like what happened to me.
Like you I could not bring myself to drive the vehicle afterwards but fortunately my car was bought on contract which had nearly run its course and i was able to return it to the finance company but not without loss as I did not use it for the last 6 weeks of the term.
I dont think you are in the UK? We have the DVSA in the UK and I am happy to give you the name and email of the guy dealing with my case and also others here in the UK. I am sure he wont want to be bothered with something he cant directly influence but the more cases he knows about the better as far as I am concerned.
My car is allegedly in the possession of Nissan UK who are carrying out research to see if they can identify the cause of the failure. They have apparently bought it back off RCI. Hopefully this sets a precedent we can all pursue if it happens thereby encouraging Nissan to sort it out. This is not happening to old cars. They are going to be around for some time.
I am dubious as to whether they will ever accept responsibility but we have to try.
Sorry just read this back to myself and realised that the statement "this is not happening to old cars" is ambiguous. I mean the cars the brakes fail on are not old. Mine was less than 2 years old

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Very similar to my experience here in the US: Nissan Leaf 2016 almost 2 years old, approaching an intersection with red light at about 30-35 mph and when I hit the breaks clanking noise and pedal goes all the way to the bottom and I lost all break capabilities, I pumped the break but nothing, glad I had enough time to think about hand break that brought me to stop on the side of the road. I took to the dealer and they say they could not replicate and they cant do anything. Since I am a software engineer who knows some about cars I highly suspect this is a DEADLY software bug and sadly enough Nissan is playing with fire and risking high liabilities by not addressing this from the core. I have read various posts and I suspect this is due to different wear and tear in tires that may lead to confusing ABS computer resulting on a disengaged pedal for a few seconds or until the car is restarted.

It is frustrating these guys will pay no attention to such overwhelming evidence.

I do have pictures and videos of the issue if someone is interested.

Nissan is for sure NOT! tired of speaking with them and threatening legal action: the last employee basically said bring it on!

Juan

This is Very interesting Ive had the same thing with mine its a 2014 model this has both occurred first drive in the morning I pump the brakes as I go down the hill before the junction but still seem kinda spongy & when warm at low speed. Nissan said they could not find anything wrong!. But the Biggest & scariest 1 was when the brakes failed completely. I'd just driven about 50 miles at various speeds to my folks i slowed down to pull into there drive all was ok. Then as I turned & drove in I noticed ALL the dash lights were on.As I put the brakes on the foot pedal was solid would not move I raised my foot to actually hit the hand brake & missed, But did stamp on the the foot brake again it was soiled then it gave way & I stopped unfortunately I caught a wall but that was all just scuffed & dented the wing. Told Nissan they said bring it in so we can look at it in a weeks time! They found several fault codes never seen before apparently!! So left the car with them as they had to send info off to Nissan & cos of time differance would be about 10 hours before reply. Anyway got it sorted in the end I was going away so told them to hang onto it as was driving 200 mile & didn't trust the car not to do it again. Said about the damage & they said it was ok It wouldn't affect anything as leased Never did find out what was wrong & as far as I know lease company paid the repair. But was wondering If It did go to the Insurance company fror repair who is responsible for the damage me or Nissan? Also had problems with dash & it all lighting up like an Xmas tree while still driving told them & showed them Picture didn't no why!!

I just wanted to add some experience from the world of VW. It's related to braking though the failure is different. My Golf GTE has an electric power booster for the braking system as it can run entirely on electric power for about 25 miles. There is no engine boost or manifold vacuum system, and the booster operates entirely from the 12V power supply.

Several months ago, the fuse on my 12V battery failed in an intermittent manner. This meant the car would start when jumpstarted, or intermittently if the fuse was in the right position. The car presented a simple warning message, "12V battery fault. Vehicle may not restart. Visit workshop." I interpreted this as the car stating that there was an urgent fix required, but that the car was still driveable provided that the car was running (at least in my case, as all I wanted to do was drive it to the garage to have the battery replaced; I hitched a lift with a friend into work for the other days.)

While driving in the 3rd lane on the A58 in Leeds, a 40 mph dual carriageway, I experienced a total loss of 12V power. Immediately, the brake pedal shot up and kicked me in the foot (which hurt), and it became very stiff to press. However, the brakes did still work with a large amount of force, possibly helped by my relatively low speed (25-30 mph). I was able to guide the vehicle to the side of the road to the ire of most other road users (no indicators, sorry) at which point I was stuck holding the brake pedal as the car would roll if the pedal was released. With no electric power, I had no parking brake. I eventually realised I could leave the car in "P" (mechanical gear lever), though I was quite reluctant to do this as I couldn't be sure of the mechanical strength of the parking pawl on a hill, I had little choice. Once in "P" the car would not leave "P" - it seems like there's a mechanical interlock of some kind that requires power to release.

The police attended the scene (I didn't call them, they were just passing by) and luckily they were able to obtain a jump starter from a nearby Harley Davidson garage. Once jump started the car came sufficiently to life to allow it to be rolled into the bus stop nearby and the tow truck was then able to take it to the garage to have the battery replaced. Ironically, I was driving the vehicle to this same garage to have the battery/fuse combination replaced. After this the car functioned just fine and it is apparently a common fault on the GTIs and GTDs too.

A few months later, I did a technical analysis using a VCDS adapter to monitor the 12V power supply voltage, after the car had been fixed. I found that after about 15 minutes of driving, the car would briefly power off the DC-DC converter for about 10 seconds at a time. The net result is that if there is a 12V battery fault, then there is nothing to "catch" this power supply, and so you lose everything, immediately, with no warning! I could only dread to think what could happen if this had occurred at higher speeds. The non-assisted brakes may not have been sufficient to stop in time.

Now, I understand that cars may experience technical faults, but I would like to know why VW decided to build a car where if there was a 12V fault, it decided to switch off the DC-DC converter for brief periods of time. Why not just leave it switched on all the time in the fault state? The big issue here is how the car lures you into a false sense of security - it runs for at least 15 minutes and then decides to start cycling the power to the 12V battery for reasons unknown to me. And then, if there is a power failure, why all power assistance is immediately lost? In all my ICE cars, vacuum-boost is still available for a few pumps after the engine is switched off, which is usually enough to come safely to a stop in case of an emergency. It seems like a defect to me for this function to be immediately unavailable.