I had an accident yesterday morning, in the store I manage's parking lot. The lot slopes uphill. As I pulled into the snow covered parking space I applied the brakes on my 2000 Astro and............nothing. The van jumped the curb and hit the building, bounced off and hit it again. It all hapened so fast I didn't have time to hit the e-brake. The van sustained relatively minor damage considering what could have happened. It needs a bumper cover and support, not too bad. A problem showed up last night on the way home, though. When I apply the brakes at first there is resistance in the pedal. Once the initial resistance is overcome the brakes act normal. It's only when you first put pressure on. The van has hydro-boost brakes and while I know my way around vacuum assisted brakes, these are foreign to me. I am really tight on cash and can't afford to start throwing parts at it, in hope of a fix. I'm not sure if this "problem" was what caused the accident, or the snow covered lot and ABS brakes, or if it showed up by coincidence . I'm thinking about flushing the power steering system for starters and see if it helps. Anybody knowlegeable about them that can point me in the right direction? I've got to get this van on the road so I can get my F150 back from my wife.

 

A little off topic, but...

Hydro-boost on an Astro? Wow. The only experience I have with hydro boost is the old GM trucks with the 6.2l diesel engine. And all I know about them is that they didn't use vacuum assisted brakes because the N/A diesel didn't have enough manifold vacuum to do the job. I think hydro boost is actually driven off of the crank, but I'm not sure. I'm probably talking about a totally different hydro boost system anyway...