Saturday, February 13, 2010

More about the Brake Conversion

Bleeding the brakes was difficult for a couple of reasons.
1. I had not connected all of the brake lines. I guess it was sort of a "I'll do it later", but forgot.
2. I had a few leaks. I hadn't tightened all of the connections.
3. The crappy one-way valve I bought for bleeding at Harbor Freight Tools (I know, I know, Harbor Freight sucks) was leaking.
4. It takes a lot of pumping to clear the air out of completely empty lines. A LOT of pumping.
5. Once I had completely got everything bled, I noticed a leak on the line going into the power brake booster. As I tightened it, I stripped out the threads on the brass fitting. Finding a replacement part was somewhat difficult - none of the catalogs carry the part (some of them have a part number, but none of them carry it), and getting the specs for the part was pretty hard. Eventually I found someone who knew the weatherhead part number. From that, I found an auto parts store here in Austin that had it. The part I ended up installing is Edelmann 265301. 3/16 inch female thread, 1/2 - 20 male to go into the booster.
Now everything is back together. The brakes work well, but are still a little spongy. The power booster is working quite well.
Anyway, here's some pictures.
The replacement fitting is on the top center part of the picture, going into the booster.
Here's the new dual chamber master cylinder:

Below, the pictures are the left front rotor and caliper, right front rotor and caliper, and a couple of pictures of the car.