1984 Van 2wd weak brakes

[Toyovan]

Quick back story to my van. I purchased my van back in 2021. First thing I noticed is how bad the brakes felt. The first 3/4 of pedal travel goes down easily with no resistance and makes a "decompression noise" the last 1/4 is when the braking starts but even then it doesn't feel convincing. The van feels more like it's "slowing down" vs "stopping" if that makes sense. Fast forward 3 years later over time I have changed front rotors, pads, calipers, rear shoes, drums and cylinders. Every brake hose and brake master cylinder. I have bled the system dozen of times, bench bled the master cylinder. There's no air in the system. I even bled the valve in the bottom middle. I have done the test to see if the brake booster is good and it checks out (i know bad brake booster means hard pedal) as it's the only brake component I have not changed. I have adjusted the rear shoes. System has no leaks. The brakes feel absolutely the SAME from the first time I drove it before changing every part I have. Are the brakes for this van not that good to begin and I'm just overreacting or is there something else I'm missing?

[Jan-Willem]

I feel your pain, I am still fighting my brakes as well, I am convinced I still have a small bubble somewhere, which just does not want to bleed. (Brake pedal sinks a bit, but only when the van is loaded….) I used to own a couple of mitsubishi pajero’s that had the load sensing valve as well, and these too, were a pain to bleed.
but to answer your question, no your pedal should be hard, even with the engine running, and the brakes are just as good as other cars of that time, you should be able to lock up your wheels. And because of the short wheelbase and high seating position, the brakes should be good enough to get your face close to the windshield
where i live, we have a (two) yearly safety inspection. They test the brake system on all 4 wheels, to see if left and right are equal. Do they have such test where you live? That would identify what wheel(s) are underperforming. In my case both of my rear wheels hardly had any stopping power ( but they bled just fine) I found I had a failure in my load sensing valve. I rechecked myself, not very accurately, or professionally, by braking hard on my gravel driveway. Before fixing it, only the fronts locked up, after the fix, all 4 did.
i do not expect a broken load sensing valve to cause a soft pedal, but it may make it impossible to bleed perhaps.

[llamavan]

Brakes should definitely not be like that.

Failing to bleed the LSPV (or a bad one) does cause exactly those symptoms. A re-bleed of that (after the other brakes, in order) would be my first suggestion.

HERE is the main thread on the topic.

Gwen