Brakes 101--Modern Safety Upgrades

Master Cylinder Upgrade

The original brakes had a small single chamber master cylinder. If it loses pressure you’re hosed. Newer systems use a larger dual chamber system. If one fails you only lose ½ of your brakes. The trucks original pedal pivots on a shaft integrated into the clutch bell housing. You push the pedal through the floor and it pushes a rod forward into the engine compartment and into the master cylinder. Unfortunately the old location of the cylinder is very small making a modern dual chamber MC very difficult. After searching the net an reviewing some mechanical issues I decided to keep the original pedal with a modification.

I fabricated an extension arm of 3/8” steel which created an arm that sits below the original pivot point and when the pedal is activated reverses the direction of force. I bought a dual MC for a ’67 Ford Falcon and created a large bracket that bolts to the frame and sits under the cab behind the pedal system. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the bracket I made. It’s pretty straight forward. It is an “L” shaped bracket with a brace, drilled to accept the new, larger, safer dual chamber MC. It took a bit of fiddling, grinding, measuring and thinking to finally get the thing to sit right but it works and seems to work well.

The picture shows the old pedal with some labels hopefully giving you an idea of what I created. For you PH owners you will remember there is a spacer between the brake pedal and clutch pedal. This plate I created is basically the same width so you drop out the spacer and slide this on without changing your pedal spacing.






E-Brake

The truck had an E-brake that was like a reverse brake drum. Out of the tranny shaft was a metal cylinder. When you pulled the handle it tightened what looked like a set of brake pads around the cylinder to create a braking effect. Since I pulled the tranny and put in the T-5 tranny I lost that system. However when I fabricated a new floor board for the relocated shifter I cut a notch and fabricated a mounting bracket for the original handle shown in the picture. I have not done it yet but I should be able to route the E-brake cables off of my transplanted Jeep axle to this handle and create a usable E-brake that looks like the original style.

Disc Brakes

Another drawback to the old trucks were the 4 wheel drum brakes. Anyone who has ever driven these old things realize they can fade, pull, and just plain not stop well. With my original plans I wanted and old truck but one that is usable everyday and on any street. I bought a kit from Charlie Akers which allowed me to keep the original spindles after stripping off the drums. It used GM parts from the mid 80’s to add 11” front disc brakes. The pics show my son helping me bolt on the “C” shaped bracket which will allow the caliper to bolt on. It also shows him with a Dremel tool carving out a little notch we needed to let the caliper fit better. It needed to be relieved by about 1/8” in one section, otherwise the kit was great. The only other problem I had was that with the truck this kit needs to have the left/right sides swapped to clear the front shock mounts. The other pic shows the 5/8” tap needed after the lower spindle holes were enlarged. I did that without taking them off the truck. I think my arms are still sore from drilling those out!