I’ll take a shot at a few things for what it’s worth. Some of this stuff is pretty basic and you probably already know about it but just in case.

First is adjustment. If the brakes aren’t adjusted properly you’ll use have a long travel on the pedal in order to supply enough fluid to all the wheel cylinders. Rule of thumb on manual adjusters like you probably have in the front is to adjust them till the wheel locks and then back them off 10 clicks. The “self adjusters” on the rear must still be initially set. For the self adjusters on the rear, tighten till the wheel locks and them back them off 12 clicks (you go 12 on these because of the finer (more numerous) teeth on the star wheel.

Some of the rear brakes I’ve worked on also require that the emergency brakes also be connected and properly adjusted in order to get a proper pedal.

In addition to the brakes themselves being adjusted properly you may also want to check and make sure the rod from the brake pedal to the booster and the rod from the booster to the MC are correct.

The comments about the volume of the master cylinder volume are pretty much right on. You may need to step up to an 1 1/8” – 1 ¼” bore MC.

Rogers comment about the master cylinder being for a Drum/Drum setup verses a Disk/Drum or Disk/Disk also correct. You will need to specify a MC for a drum/drum setup (which usually means something from the 60s). One of the main reasons for this is that the majority of the early Drum/Drum master cylinders included a residual pressure valve (s) which are needed on all drum brake axles and usually not used (or one with a lower pressure is installed) on Disk Brake axles. It can get a bit confusing when you start getting into cars around 1968 and later with drum brakes. In many of those cars the residual pressure valve was moved from the MC to the brake proportioning valve.


When you do get a good pedal, don’t be real surprised is it still doesn’t stop well for a while. I suspect that at least the front brake drums (and possibly the rears are used and have been turned. When this happens and new shoes are installed the curvature of the drum is larger than that of the new shoe, resulting in a small contact patch between the shoe and drum when the brakes are applied. As the shoe wears into the drum the circumferences will eventually match and stopping should at least be passable. Years ago a lot of shops used to “arc” the new shoes to fit the drums…….now days most mechanics just look at you funny if you ask them about arcing the shoes, and wouldn’t recognize the equipment to do it if they tripped over it. Hell now days most of the kids don’t know how to work on a car that doesn’t have 4 wheel disks and ABS.


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