2000 Chrysler Town and Country poor "hard", sever

Last spring I happened to drive my daughter's MY 2000 T&C minivan and noticed that the brakes didn't seem "right". I purchased this van in late '99 and gave it to my daughter about 4 or 5 years ago.

She had had Redmond WA Les schwab do some brake work in Nov of '07 and so she took it back to them and they flushed, refilled and bled the brake system.

Back in Nov they had installed (renco?) Rebuild front calipers, new brake pads, and turned the rotors.

I did not drive the van again until about 6 weeks ago and in my opinion there had been no improvement. Normal braking, basically stopping reasonably slowly, seems to be okay. It's when I apply the brakes really hard, I mean REALLY hard, that the brakes don't seem to be up to the level I remember it being when new.

I weight 235 lbs and am 6'2" and even applying as much force as I can muster the ABS will not kick in at all on a dry asphalt surface and with difficulty, not always, even on a wet asphalt surface.

About a month ago I returned the van to the same Redmond Les Schwab shop and they test drove it and said it appeared normal to them.

Not being satisfied I took the van to the Kirkland Chrysler dealer and was told that Les Schwab never uses good brake pads and I should replace them first before spending any money with Chrysler.

I bought NAPA ceramix front pads and installed them but that did not help. In discussions with my daughter I learned that a few years ago while they were on vacation in the bay area of CA the brake master cyclinder had been replaced due to the brake pedal "leaking" down after stopping.

I have the factory repair manual for the van and that indicates that our AWD version, ABS and disc brakes all around, uses a master cylinder with a different bore (25.4 MM, 1") than other T&C vans of that MY.

So I thought that maybe the wrong master cylinder had been installed. So I took it to Kirkland Chrysler and had a new master cyclinder installed, ~$500.00. The service technician agreed at the onset that the brake "feel" under hard braking was not right but agreed post changing the master cylinder had not helped.

There was a Les Schwab dealer right next door to the Kirkland chrysler dealer so out of frustration I drove into their shop and asked to have someone drive the van and render an opinion. The service technian came back agreeing with me that the hard braking "feel" was not normal.

He cross checked everything on the various invoices, service work and concluded that the wrong front calipers had been installed by the Redmond shop. He installed the "correct" calipers but seemingly even that did not help.

I have preliminarily examined the bore of the master cylinder removed by chrysler and it appears to be about 1/16th of an inch shy of the 1" stated by the manual.

I had also suspected that the ABS might be at fault and had myself verified, as best I could, that there was no pressure leakage through the ABS manifold. But the Chrysler techncian ran the entire ABS diagnostic procedure and found no ABS faults.

Help!