Big Brake Day (The Red Lady)

February 7th was the day I somewhat arbitrarily picked as the Big Brake day. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the involvement of a professional in working on the car adds deadline which provides motivation to do peripheral tasks, plus the work done on the day itself, and so it came to pass that I contracted John The Mechanic (whom I have known since I was about 12) to render his services for the day and get the braking system working.

In the leadup to this day I finally pulled my finger out and mounted the master cylinder on the firewall and attached it to the pedal box. The master cylinder, bought from Master Power brakes in the USA, was equipped with brackets for '58-'64 Chevy fullsize, but of course they didn't fit my righthand drive car. At least not straight out of the box, but it was a fairly simple job to make it fit. The existing mounting holes on the firewall side of the bracket were in the wrong spot, so I had them welded up and redrilled them to fit the four studs on the pedal box that poke through holes in the firewall and perform the dual task of securing the lower end of the pedal assembly and mounting the master cylinder. After that was done, the lower part of the bracket on the left side interfered with the steering column hole in the firewall, so a little cutting and reshaping was required. Sure makes for a more confidence-inspiring setup than the old single circuit, manual master cylinder.

It's also been interesting, incidentally, to check out these two pictures of the engine bay, separated by almost 15 years. I had all the holes welded up in the inner guards with the intention of running the wiring out of sight, tucked between the inner and outer guards.

Anyway, most of what John did on the 7th of Feb was laying the plumbing for the brakes, flaring tubing, adding the fittings and connecting everything up. In hindsight I probably could have done all this myself, it's not rocket science after all, but the tradeoff of money vs expediency in this instance was a good one anyway. After filling the master cylinder and beginning to bleed the system out, we found a leak, not at one of the fittings oddly enough, but at the plug at the back of the proportioning valve where, after machining out the interior from a block of brass, a plug was put in the end of the hole that the bore passed through. This plug was ever so slightly out of square with the seating surface, and as a result it leaked. This is obviously a manufacturing fault, but since I acquired these parts all the way back in April 2004, it's probably a little too late to make a warranty claim. One of the pitfalls of procrastination I guess. A little thread tape seems to have fixed the problem and with that done the Red Lady now has WORKING BRAKES!

Time spent: About 30 hours all up
Cost: Labour, $442, Parts (entire brake system) $3715.15