Thanks for reading. Truck was fine driving home I heard a loud squeal under the hood and smelled the belt burning. My guess was the AC compressor so I shut it off, however I was not getting any air to blow through the vents. The blower motor works 'cause I have the defroster. Ok no big deal, YET. I quickly learned that I have no breaks, NOTHING! I need to get my family out of here.(Long Island north shore) Has anyone got a clue what happened? Can I fix it?

Thanks All

 

Your vacuum pump seized up. It's the thing that is shaped like a UFO. It's easy to replace and isn't too horribly expensive. If I were you, I would go ahead and replace the belt at the same time that I replaced the vacuum pump just in case the failure caused your current belt excessive wear or damage.

Edit: Here's another thing to do. When you get the old one pulled out, go ahead and try to spin the pulley on it. If you can't, that means it's toast. If you can, put your finger over the fitting where the vacuum line would go, and feel for the vacuum. If there's no vacuum, it's toast. That's how you can know for sure that the vacuum pump is bad.

 

yep x2 on the vacuum pump

 

X3 on the VP

 

Yeppers, these guys got it.

 

Hey BuckHammer and the rest who replied so quickly, THANK YOU ALL. I'm gonna get right on it. thanks again, Vinny

 

Make sure you have access to a power steering pulley remover / installer as you will need it to swap over the pulley on the V/P. Unless you happen to get one with the pulley on it, but most of them include a pulley. At least I have never seen one that did.

 

Make sure to put the bolts holding the pump in before you install the pulley...

 

Or R&I the pulley with the old/new pump in-frame.

On another forum, someone suggested using studs/nuts instead of bolts.

 

Let us know how it went. Stay dry!

 

I just put the bolt that is behind the pulley through the pump before I installed the pulley. It's much easier IMO to install the pulley on the bench than to do it in place on the engine.

 

Yeah, that's what I did. It wasn't hard for me at all, and I have big hands.