Brake pedal weirdness after getting bearings changed

["Nathan" <etherwolf@sopris.net>]

I'm having a really hard time rationalizing this one, and the very competent mechanic who did the
job is a bit baffled as well. Hopefully one of you can shed some light on what causes this.

I just got both my front bearings replaced. The car runs absolutely dreamy now; the alignment is
perfect, the noise is finally gone... but the brakes are much stiffer now. How in the hell, I don't
know, I would think if anything they'd be a little looser. By stiffer, I mean I used to have a
really nice, easy feel of increasing pressure pretty uniformly down to maybe 3/4 of the way to the
floor, at which point you just can't push it any further and the car has thrown you into the
steering wheel :-)

Now, I can't get it more than 1/4 the way to the floor before it's rock solid won't budge any
further. I talked to the mechanic and he doesn't understand how it could be that way, that he didn't
adjust the braking system at all, but he did have to pull the calipers off the rotor. He said he was
quite careful getting it back together and that nothing he did should have caused the pedal to
respond in this fashion.

Any ideas on what happened? I really liked the feel of the brakes before he did this, and I'm kinda
worried about it, even though the brakes in a technical sense work great still... My only thought
was that maybe he tightened the two hex-head bolts too much? Could this possibly affect things that
dramatically?

Thanks in advance!!!

# Nathan
1996 Jetta GLX