bomb gone again?

[urquattro]

> I am still fighting my brakes: An occasional flashing of the brake light
in
> the dash has turned into continuous flashing and the lovely three beeps.
At
> the same time the brake pedal is stiff when car is first started but
returns
> to normal after a mile. Testing the bomb reveals that I get 3-5 pumps with
> the enginge off before the pedal stiffens. There is no leak and the bomb
is
> 4 months old. Blau tells me they've never had a defective bomb and it must
> be my pump (Normal assist though as far as I can tell).
> So the question is: is my bomb the culprit? Thank you as always!

... if you get proper steering and braking operation I think that pretty
much rules out the pump ... but it may not be a bad bomb though ... did you
run the test on the brake servo where you remove the return line and check
to see that there is no flow while the brakes are released?  It seems to me
that it could still be a bad bomb ... did you notice the number of pumps go
up and the light stop flashing when you first installed the bomb?  If you
noticed a deterioration in the brake's "reserves" since the replacement I
would still be thinking la bamba ... while I would agree that reports of
infant mortality on them seems low, I'm sure that it can happen due to a
manufacturing defect.  These things are operating at incredibly high
pressures after all.

I'd recommend that you test the servo, and if it checks out OK go back to
ol' Jimbo and tell him that he has his very first defective bomb ...

HTH!
Steve Buchholz
San Jose, CA (USA)