Brake Warning Light with occasional hard pedal

[stroken'n'smoken]

OOOOK.... so now that i got my icp reg. problem all fixed and shes back to normal, i noticed while backing out of a spot i hit my brakes then i continued and hit them again and the pedal was HARRRDDD and the red (!)(P) light is on and i almost gave someone a new grille. So i checked the fluid etc. and its right up where it should be. A few weeks have gone by and ive been busy with school so havent had time to get into it and now its at the point where the light is always on and if i start to go and im just rolling or at low speeds (10-15) if i hit the pedal more than once it gets hard and barely stops. I noticed that when driving at highway speeds with higher boost the light goes out til i hit the brakes and the light comes on and with more than 1 pump of the pedal the pedal gets hard.

I have been reading up and down and im convinced its either a vac. pump or the brake booster. I unplugged the line from the front of the brake booster (with that goofy looking round thing on the end of the hose that plugs into the booster), ive never messed with vacuum and im kinda new so i didnt know exactly what i was looking for since the truck was off (now that i think i should have started to see if it was sucking but that was then and this is now, ill save my neighbors the headache and wait til the morning) but either way i blew into it really hard and it made a cool wooshwoooshwoosh sound....didnt help. anyone have any tips that could help here, they would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,
Dick Heff

[WEWILLE]

A red brake light will turn on for one of three reasons, 1 is low fluid, 2 is pressure difference, or loss of pressure in a circuit, 3 is parking brake applied. Is the pedal normal height?

[WEWILLE]

I just remembered on these trucks the brake light will also light if you get less than 15 inches of vaccum, so get a gauge on it and you should be well above 20 inches if its working properly, your gonne need a pump

[stroken'n'smoken]

the pedal is at norm. height, the fluid level is norm... ill try to find a vac. gauge somewhere and check it. also do you know how to tell if the brake booster is bad?
thanks for your help.

[cfunderb]

It's most likely the vac. pump. When they are just going bad, and not totally gone, they won't rebuild pressure fast enough after hitting the brakes once.

If it was the booster, you'd have problems with the pedal everytime you hit it.