During braking the pedal is high and requires more effort than it should to stop the 960.
- Recently replaced front pads a few weeks back. Seems unrelated. Calipers are fine and all rotors are nicely smoothed after a drive.
- (Test) Pumping brakes with car off stiffens it even greater. While holding brakes and starting the car, the pedal becomes depressed a couple inches.

It seems there is some power assist. Wouldnt the diaphram in the brake booster be alright if it holds vaccum (shown by the test)?

My guess is maybe there is not enough vaccum. Its hard to tell but the hose to the booster looks fine. There is slight roughness to the idle (but nothing I would complain about unless its related). Around the same time this happend I got a CEL for EGR flow to LOW. If it was stuck open then I could see it causing poor vaccum, but it should create the opposite problem.

I guess I will ask a theory question on top of all this: in a healthly PCV system, wouldnt air the crank case create no vaccum in the intake manifold. I guess I just wonder about all these sources that could reduce vaccum. Hope that is not too much of a stupid question.

Thanks for any help.