AtWhatMileage
Brakes · 4 owner reports

Master cylinder or brake booster failure on the 2007 Lincoln Navigator

Only 4 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 4
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 25%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $450–$2,200
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 4th

When master cylinder or brake booster failure gets reported

There are 4 reports of master cylinder or brake booster failure on the 2007 Lincoln Navigator, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 4th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 75,000 miles — —

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $450–$2,200 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2016, at a median of 75,000 miles, and latest on the 2017 at 110,000 miles.

By volume the 2007 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Make: lincoln model: navigator year: 2007 issue: complete brakes failure description:\ on several occasions, the brakes have completely failed. We have observed that generally this failures occurs when the vehicle is going downhill at about 30 - 45 MPH speed. The problem suddenly appears with no prior indication of anything malfunctioning, lasts for several seconds and then disappears. Problem description: at speeds mentioned above, the antiskid light comes on with whirring / grinding noises and the brakes do not respond when the brake pedal is pushed. The conditions remains for several seconds, usually about 5 - 10 seconds periods when the brakes do not work at all. Afterwards, the brakes start to work normally. The dealership has not been able to reproduce this condition and diagnose any issues, although this very problem has been reported and discussed by other owners in various forums on the internet. Not being able to stop the car will result in an accident causing serious injuries and death. The dealership replaced the master cylinder and the brake booster. However, other lincoln navigator owners have reported the issue to…

10,000 miles NHTSA complaint 769357 filed 2010-03-03

Also reported on the 2007 Lincoln Navigator

Other body or interior problem

6 reports median 61k

Fuel pump failure

4 reports median 104k

Loss of braking

4 reports median 56k

Other electrical problem

4 reports median 81k

Other brake problem

3 reports median 20k

Other speed control problem

3 reports median 125k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 4 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 4 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does master cylinder or brake booster failure happen on the 2007 Lincoln Navigator?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 75,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is master cylinder or brake booster failure on the 2007 Lincoln Navigator?

4 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed