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My friend just purchased a 49' chevy styline deluxe. The car has no brakes. We were thinking of installing new brake shoes, spring kit, wheel cyl., ruber brake hoses and a new master cylinder. Does any one know how to take out the master cylinder?, is mounted under the floor. Thanks
The trick is, you have to take the pedal, or pedals if it's a stick, off the cylinder first. There's a retaining bolt on the front of the cylinder boss, perpendicular to the pedal pivot(s). Take it out, then fish the pin that's below it out with a piece of wire. Then its pretty straightforward.
By the way, that '49 has Huck brakes. Be careful when removing the weird coil springs that go from shoe to shoe, they can be impossible to find!
thanks Ill give it a shot tomorrow.
I have a 49 Fleetline, how hard is it to convert those?Quote:
Originally Posted by R Pope
Find a '51-'54 Chevy and grab the backing plates, hubs and rear axles, and wheels. That way you have 5 bolt wheels and much better brakes. It all bolts up, and the '49 master cylinder will work with the newer brakes. The fronts are 2" X 11", where the older ones are 1 3/4" X 11". Doesn't seem like much, but you'll notice the difference. Then, with the 5 bolt hubs, you can adapt disc brakes to it when you get some extra bucks.
BTW, if the donor car is a Powerglide, you might want to grab the rear end, too. They had 3.55 gears where yours are 4.11. The old dipper "6" will thank you.
Powerglide cars have a diffrent M/C, pretty sure the bore is diffrent, but I'm not sure. part numbers are deffinetly diffrent. brakes are the same tho, unless wheel cylinders are a diffrent bore.. powerglide is considerably heavier than the 3spd, so they may have used more line preassure..
the '49-'50 brake hardware is deffinetly more expensive.. 'most' of it is available, but all is available for the '51-'54
The '53 and '54 have a 7/8" bore, the older ones are 1". The 'Glide cylinder is different because there is no mounting boss for the clutch pedal, other than that they're the same.
The 49 is 5 hole wheels.Quote:
Originally Posted by R Pope
I think the only diffrence is the backing plate, drum and associated parts.. I just looked in my chevs of the 40s catalog, and '51-'60 is the same P/N for the brake drum. '49-'50 is not listed.. '51-60 uses 4 of the same drum, which would need to accomodate a 2" shoe, the rears are 1 3/4" same as '49-'50 all the way round, so '51-'60 drums should work on the old backing plates if you need drums and can't find a donor car
wouldn't the wider drum make contact with the backing plate?
Willowbilly---Are you sure it hasn't already been converted to newer brakes? I had a '49 and it had 6 bolt wheels, I'm sure the '50's did too.
My friend 1949 styline deluxe has 5 lugs as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by R Pope
I saw the catalog, man those brake parts for 49-50 are EXPENSIVE!. I think is cheaper to convert to disc brakes instead. Also not that many stores carry the parts that I need. :(
Are we talking about sedans, not pickups? As far as I know the 48 year model were the last 6 hole production wheels on Chevy passenger cars except for maybe something like ultra rare Nascar equipped 57s.Quote:
Originally Posted by R Pope
This is my 49
'48 is the last listed year for 6 bolt wheels in my '53 Motors ManualQuote:
Originally Posted by R Pope
it shouldn't, the diamater is the same, the only diffrence would be where the shoe sits in the drum.. to be sure it would probably be best to borrow 1 or get 1 out of a junkyard.. I put replacement drums on my '65 Rambler which are visibly wider, and they are internally wider, and do fit both the 2" and 2.5" versions of the brake system, I didn't think they were going to fit, but they doQuote:
Originally Posted by willowbilly3
Maybe the 6 bolt wheels were Canadian production. My Canuck manual, 49-54, shows 6 and 5 bolt wheels.
Thanks to all of you guys. We installed new shoes, wheel cylinders, brake lines, springs, and master cylinder. Master cylinder was very easy to remove, only hard part was trying to remove the rusty bolts. Now everything is back on, I tried bleeding the brake system the usual way (pump 5 times and hold) but brake fluid comes out through the small hole at the filler plug, Each time you pump the brake pedal. Any ideas on how to bleed the brake system?
Sal