Is this a Modern Powermaster?

[SpeedRacerX]

What's old is new again...

http://autoweek.com/article/technol...eadline-center&utm_content=body&utm_campaign=

"Aftermarket electric brake boosters have been available for years, geared toward hot-rodders running low-vacuum engines and generally delivering mixed results. OEMs have used electric boost in electric cars and on occasion in gasoline/diesel cars over the decades, but they’ve generally given up on the idea quickly -- mostly because the motors tended to fail in short order, turning the brake pedal into a nearly immovable rock."

Really? LOL.

 

[gsgnnut]

I'm all for technology, but I think I'm missing something. My25 year experience with the PM taught me on repeated occasions that the unit has a serious fatal flaw- when it fails , just like the article says, you are pushing a rock and saying your prayers. Unless the new technology has a fail safe that allows you to stop the car relatively safely with a failed powermaster, its still a dangerous reinvented wheel. Many of us tossed our powermasters for hydroboost or vacuum after near death experiences with sudden failures. My point- in my 40 years of driving just about everything with wheels, over millions of miles I've experienced about 7 unexpected brake failures. 4 were with powermasters and they all occurred with a combined 50 k thousand driving miles and its a miracle that there was no loss of life involved. Of the other 3, these occurred with over nearly a million miles combined of driving time. Two were brake line failures which a second pump of the pedal stopped the car rather easily. the other was a master cylinder failure and again a second pump stopped the car. I'm no statistics expert but it would seem that there's definitely a increased incident rate of failure and almost total loss of braking with a failure of the powermaster of the late 80"s. Unless they design in a failsafe, it will the same crap as the PM. Too bad too, as imo this was a great idea but simply poorly executed by GM. Hopefully the new ones will fail less often and when they do, you wont be stomping on a concrete slab to stop.