Braking
! When the brakes get wet
When driving in rain or after washing the vehicle, the brakes may get wet. As a result, brake stopping distance will be longer. To dry the brakes, drive the vehicle at a safe speed while lightly depressing the brake pedal to heat up the brakes.
Remember to make use of engine braking in addition to foot braking. When descend- ing a grade, if only the foot brake is used, the brakes may start working improperly because of brake fluid overheating, caused by overheated brake pads. To help prevent this, shift to a lower gear to get stronger engine braking.
Do not depress the brake pedal suddenly when a tire is punctured. This could cause
Braking 327
a loss of control of the vehicle. Keep driving straight ahead while gradually reducing speed. Then slowly pull off the road to a safe place.
Your vehicle has two separate circuit brake systems. Each circuit works diagonally across the vehicle. If one circuit of the brake system should fail, the other half of the system still works. If one circuit fails, the brake pedal will go down much closer to the floor than usual and you will need to press it down much harder. A much longer distance will be needed to stop the vehicle.
The brake booster uses engine manifold vacuum to assist braking force. Do not turn off the engine while driving because that will turn off the brake booster, resulting in poor braking power.
The brakes will continue to work even when the brake booster completely stops functioning. However, if this happens, you will have to depress the pedal much harder than during normal braking, and the brak- ing distance will increase.
While the ignition switch is turned “ON” and the engine is running, the supple- mental booster function operates when the brake booster performance is decreased due to insufficient vacuum boost.
When the brake pedal is depressed while the supplemental booster function is oper- ating, an operation sound and brake pedal vibration may be generated. This is not a malfunction.
Brake assist is a driver assistance system. It assists the brake power when the driver cannot depress the brake pedal strongly and the brake power is insufficient.
Brake assist generates the brake power according to the speed at which the driver depresses the brake pedal.
328 ABS (Anti-lock Brake System)
The disc brake pad wear warning indica- tors on the disc brakes give a warning noise when the brake pads are worn.
If a squeaking or scraping noise is heard from the disc brakes while braking, im- mediately have your vehicle checked by your SUBARU dealer.
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