"Pulsating" braking force

[Seeley]

A ball joint should allow nearly zero play, while a bushing will allow whatever amount of play is built into the system.

In other words, the only movement a ball joint should allow is the tolerance allowed for a layer of grease, measured in thousandths of an inch. A bushing will squish to allow as much movement as the assembly it is daking up slack in will allow.

Before altering the OEM geometry of the suspension (control arms), make sure you are at least as good of an engineer as the people who designed it, or you're going to run into problems.

I'm guessing you didn't write what you meant and are thinking about retrofitting a balljoint type assembly in place of a bushing mounted assembly, like we do with quite a few of the fwd racecars at the shop. The major thing to look out for then is binding, which can make keeping the car pointed straight during acceleration and braking interesting.

 

[elmobob]

I've noticed the same lately here, just hit 20K miles

 

[mahout]

I started noticing the following in the past few weeks. When slowing down, at around 20 ~ 30 mph, the braking force sometimes seems to be “pulsating”, i.e. while I am keeping constant pressure on the brake pedal, I can feel the braking force fluctuating in a repeated pattern with a period of around 1 to 2 seconds. It is as if I am moving my foot up and down on the brake pedal.

Anyone experienced this?

At first I thought doing the NTB12086 will fix this issue but it didn’t.

We've had to 'cure' this many, many times with customers. Virtually invariably its either warped rotors or coating on the rotors from being put at reast with brakes hot and pressured against rotors. Usually its pad residue. If there is a scuffing sound rather than a ruibbing sound often its the latter.
The cure is turning the rotors.

 

[mahout]

I started noticing the following in the past few weeks. When slowing down, at around 20 ~ 30 mph, the braking force sometimes seems to be “pulsating”, i.e. while I am keeping constant pressure on the brake pedal, I can feel the braking force fluctuating in a repeated pattern with a period of around 1 to 2 seconds. It is as if I am moving my foot up and down on the brake pedal.

Anyone experienced this?

At first I thought doing the NTB12086 will fix this issue but it didn’t.

I've noticed the same lately here, just hit 20K miles

I started noticing the following in the past few weeks. When slowing down, at around 20 ~ 30 mph, the braking force sometimes seems to be “pulsating”, i.e. while I am keeping constant pressure on the brake pedal, I can feel the braking force fluctuating in a repeated pattern with a period of around 1 to 2 seconds. It is as if I am moving my foot up and down on the brake pedal.

Anyone experienced this?

At first I thought doing the NTB12086 will fix this issue but it didn’t.

We've had to 'cure' this many, many times with customers. Virtually invariably its either warped rotors or coating on the rotors from being put at reast with brakes hot and pressured against rotors. Usually its pad residue. If there is a scuffing sound rather than a ruibbing sound often its the latter.
The cure is turning the rotors.

I've noticed the same lately here, just hit 20K miles

A couple of times we found the wheel nuts had been torqued way over specs, warping the rotors.

 

[dgpcolorado]

We've had to 'cure' this many, many times with customers. Virtually invariably its either warped rotors or coating on the rotors from being put at reast with brakes hot and pressured against rotors. Usually its pad residue. If there is a scuffing sound rather than a ruibbing sound often its the latter.
The cure is turning the rotors.

In many (most?) cases the grabby brake problem is not something physically wrong with the rotors or pads. One easy way to test this is to see if the problem declines or disappears when the car is charged to 100% (no regen). If the answer is yes, then it is something to do with the integration of regen and friction braking, not rotors or pads. And a simple fix that often works is mentioned upthread.