Dual Master Cylinder Project

•May 20, 2013 • Leave a Comment

I worked a long day on the car over the weekend and I managed to complete a project that I wasn’t planning on. My original master cylinder produced a leak during the bleeding process. So to cut a long story short I upgraded to a Duel Master Cylinder System. Ok, my car is not concours original anymore, but I intend to drive and enjoy it not just show it, clean it and be unable to enjoy it because of the spec of dust on the exhaust. It has taken me most of the evening to write-up the process and pictures, but I am pleased with the results and wanted to share it as promised in my previous post. I have now posted the project under Photos – Engine bay – Dual Master Cylinder Upgrade, or click here for the quick link. This is no ordinary upgrade though, this kit includes a rear proportioning valve, built-in rear pressure valve and an inline pressure valve for the front brakes. Disc brake ready!

Next weekend I hope to bleed the brakes or at least try again.

The only side effect to my long day on the car was I felt like I had my legs run over by a bus. All that stretching and leaning over the fender took its toll on my hamstrings. Is it that I am getting old or should I have done some stretching exercises first? Yeah, like I wouldn’t look like a doughnut doing exercises in my garage to change a master cylinder! Us blokes don’t do that sort of thing, but I might just do that behind closed doors next time. :-)

Rust

The recent bad weather has been doing wonders for the Rust test that I am still performing. The comparison is between the Granville Rust Cure and the FE-123.  I will continue to run the experiment a while longer then I will post some pictures and results so far. I intend to do a long-term test and keep coming back to it with updates.

Late night on the car

•May 19, 2013 • 4 Comments

Today was a mental busy day, the sun was out the birds were singing and I was bashing and clanking in the garage. I have spent all day and few more hours into the evening doing my upgrade. I have taken out the old leaking master cylinder and replaced it with a new Dual Master cylinder. Yep, last week I went down to see Adam at Mustang Maniac and got myself a new set up. The parts took a little while to find amongst the organised chaos there of the massive delivery of stock. I was a little worried about the fact there was a single cylinder that does all the brakes. If the single cylinder leaks then I lose all braking, not good. So it was a no brainer really to get this in. OK, again it’s not concourse for the car I know all that, but it’s safe or will be once its done. I have taken lots of photo’s for the project and what had to be done, I will upload them and write them up this week sometime, watch this space. All I am saying is I needed more copper pipe, lots of it!

Why didn’t I do it yesterday? Simple, remember that rotten ol’ (OK, it’s new but I don’t like it because of the hassle it gives me), summer-house I was having fun with? Well I finished it off yesterday. It was a total nightmare to say the least. The glass was cracked when I opened the packets up and the latch had the bar missing inside to go to the inside handle. Just what I needed, NOT. I put the rest of the glass in that I could and panel pined the beading on. Now to me, hammers and glass don’t go well together and I was so carefull not to break any more glass, hardly ideal. Give me metal to sort out anytime!

But, next weekend is a Bank Holiday, that means I will be doing car stuff only, no sheds, no fences, no summer houses, no weeding, no patios, no nothing except my car. That is unless the better half decides I need to do a few jobs to make up for the money I spent on the brake cylinder. I admit it – I dare say one of the days will be me doing jobs for her. I may wear the trousers in this relationship – but she gets them out for me to wear! :-)

I have attached a picture of the finished Master Cylinder as a little teaser.

dual MC

A blog to follow

•May 12, 2013 • 4 Comments

A great piece of news if you’re into Mustangs

On my blogs you will have seen me mention a few times the name Mustang Maniac, They are my suppliers of choice for the parts & body panels that I need here in the UK, if they don’t have it, they will get it. Others promise the parts from their sites, but then order the parts so it takes ages. Adam has become a great friend of mine now and I am pleased to plug his blog for him. I am expecting all sorts of things to appear on there, from news about what they are up to and projects they have on the go. The blog has only just started up, but it’s looking good so far I have to say.

The link is:   http://mustangmaniac.wordpress.com  please pop over have a look and follow them. They have some great cars, rare cars and some not so great cars there too, go to their photos and look at the “Graveyard” to see what I mean. Everything there is for sale, and the parts are in stock and at very reasonable prices. Their main site is also undergoing a major overhaul so I have been informed as well, the new site should be providing an online order form, which is quite exciting.

I have also added Mustang Maniac links to my blog, if you need parts, service or restoration ask these guys first.

If you do speak to them, email them or do any social network stuff please give me a mention to them.  :-D

 

Secret location

Secret location

Brakes stop play

•May 12, 2013 • 2 Comments

It’s been a bad weekend for the part-time mechanic…

I’m back on the blog again, do I hear cheers? Ok maybe not then. The last couple of weekends have been mental and I have not had a chance to update the blog properly, for that I apologise. Last weekend I had to put up a Summer house that was going cheap from B&Q  (that’s a big DIY wholesale for those who don’t know who they are over the pond). Well it turned upand was unloaded from the lorry, there was no book of words (instructions). Now I do know that being a bloke it’s mandatory to throw away the book of words as we don’t need it. But, I wanted to check that everything was there this time. To cut a long story short the wife was on the phone giving some poor geeza a hard time. I keept asking for the phone to sort it out, but I was declined my kind offer to have a word with somebody and get it sorted. It turned out that the wife tactics of being upset and complaining worked over my method of having a major rant and losing my rag! We work well – the good cop / bad cop thing! In the mean time I am preparing the car for the brake bleeding I wanted to do. No bits means I can’t put it together, I can do my brakes. I was getting out the Sealey vacuum bleeder ready, the spanners were ready, the fluid was ready, and then the car turned up with the bag of bits and the book of words as a special delivery. I thanked him through clenched teeth, and he spent a while looking at the car in the garage. He liked the car so I decided he wasn’t so bad after all. I had to make out how grateful I was at receiving the bits as I could now put all my car bits away again and go build the wooden hut, sorry Summer house! Oh yeah – like I was well chuffed. NOT. So I started to check the bits and they were all there so I started to build it. I followed all the instructions, I worked out where all the bits were to go and it was looking OK. The sky was getting dark and race against time before it rained on the untreated roof was on. The rain held off which was good and I got to the point of getting the doors on. Well they may have been dolls house doors as they didn’t fit. They will need a router on there to shave about half-inch of the hinge side to enable them to fit in the gap. The lap of the boards was concave in the middle, the doors meet at the top but had a gap I could get my hand in at the bottom. I just so love flat pack. Why was it cheap? Now I know why the doors were from a garden shed and two different ones at that. Now with the right hump, I downed tools and declared that the darkness stops play and the now darkening raining cloud was now hanging over my head following me around.

This weekend was my time on the car and was going to blog it. So Saturday morning I went to the garage and got everything ready. The Vacuum tool was out, the spanners were out, the fluid was out, the wife was out! I decided to check the inside of the brake Master Cylinder and it was a little rusty so I got my 2000 grit sandpaper out and removed the loose rust. The bottom of the bore had a little pitting in there, but it wasn’t bad, so I decided to go for it. The reservoir was filled and I pushed the brakes a little. Checked, all was fine, no leaks. Pressed it a little more, checked all was still fine. I went to the rear of the car and got the bleed kit ready and started the vacuum. Nothing coming through so I give the pedal a little nudge to get the fluid moving down the pipes. Then I went to check. There it was, fluid dripping out of the gap between the master cylinder and the power booster. So I slung a load of rags under the now larger forming puddle over my nice paintwork in the engine bay. I had a little syringe that I sucked out the fluid and decanted into the plastic bowl near me. I didn’t know what was coming out faster, the drips from the brake cylinder or the tears from my eyes watching the brake fluid going to waste. I locked of the bleed nipple and killed the vacuum. A quick call to my Mustang hotline Adam, he said, is it doing this? Yep! Is it doing that? Yep! Conclusion - the master cylinder was indeed faulty, well I am sure that was what we decided it was at the time. So now I have to decide, replace the single reservoir, or upgrade to dual reservoir. I know that a dual is not the original but then again I will have a separate system if one side of the master cylinder went wrong. I slept on it, I read up about it and made my mind up. Dual reservoir is the way to go. Also when I upgrade to discs, I will be ready there that side of it as well. So when you read this Adam, get me a dual master ready! :-)

Brake bleeder connected to the rear wheel

Brake bleeder connected to the rear wheel

Today I have been sulking a bit as I can’t do a great deal,  so I decided to catch up on the blog. I have updated some pages and added a new page.

Updated:

Front Valance (Part 2), or click here for the quick link

Rear Brake Drum Rebuild, or click here for the quick link

Rocker Covers, or click here for the quick link

Hand brake Cable & Hardware Replacement, or click here for the quick link

Added:

Brake bleeding and issues, or click here for the quick link. With this page I will be updating it as I go along so it will be a running guide if you like. Once I have got to use the Sealey VS402 I will post a review of it, but at the moment I has been used. Not through the lack of trying I might add.

I am in the process of doing a rust comparison between the Granville Rust Cure that I have reviewed (click here) and the FE-123 treatments. I started a few weeks ago and have been watching the results so far. I will keep you updated and start a review once I have a little more time to go and results to hand.

“Finishing second….”

•May 9, 2013 • 2 Comments

“Finishing second means you are the first person to lose”

- Gilles Villeneuve.

Mods and Rockers

•May 1, 2013 • 2 Comments

It’s midweek and time is dragging. It seems like somebody has decided that each second will in fact last one minute. I have asked my colleagues at work “is time dragging or is it me?” the response was a resounding “it’s dragging”. I have never understood this and would love to know why we think that. Yet when we get to the weekend the time flies and before I know it’s back to work. Any ideas why this is?

This weekend I am hoping to get the springs for my shoe connection springs for the rear brakes, if I can then I will put the silicon brake fluid in and see if I get a peddle or not, that will be a big milestone for me. If I don’t get the springs, it will be bodywork time and the rockers will go back in that I have just sprayed. The rockers should be Ford Blue I know that, but I don’t want them Ford blue, I want shiny metal or have Mustang Racing all over them. As my rockers were rusty again, I decided to mod them with a little silver paint to match the brake booster. This is a temporary measure so I didn’t spend too much time on the covers and in fact I was pretty pleased with how they came out. I have as promised uploaded the photos for the rocker covers work. They can be found in the Photos section under Engine Bay, or, you can click here for the quick link to see them. I will update the photo’s again once I have them in the car to see what they look like. What does anybody think, will the paint last? Do they look stupid or a waste of my time? Better than rusty looking covers?

after the lacquer but with masking still in place

Sprayed rocker covers and oil cap

What a rocker

•April 28, 2013 • 3 Comments

Another productive weekend on the car

The sun was out when I got up, thanks to the inconsiderate neighbour who decided that revving his engine up would be an ideal way to warm it up. Don’t you just love those people? Anyway I was all excited to get the last brake set on and the drive shaft back in. True to form out to the man cave got all my tools out and lined up the parts like a load of soldiers on parade. I assembled the brakes in record time, and came up with a little tip. If you have the drum brake spring removal tool there is a one end of the leg that will allow you to slide the spring onto the center pivot, apply a little grease or oil on the leg and the spring will just slip straight over onto the pivot. Simple, but effective! So the brakes were with the drive shaft now out in the garage with me. Everything assembled fine, nuts done up fine and the drive shaft went in no problems at all. You can see the whole process here or go to the Photos section Drive Shaft. The last part of the jigsaw was the hand brake. This was missing off the car so I need  a new one. Thanks to Adam at Mustang Maniac again, he provided me with all the parts I needed when I was there last. The cable was fitted into the backing plate and the cable was bent a little to make the route correct. Assembling the front end linkage was a breeze. I have now written up the process and posted the link in the Photos section under Wheels and Brakes, Hand brake replacement or click here for the quick link. During this work it had started to rain but I was unaware of that as I was sort of wedged under the car again. Once I got out from under the car my next job was going to be postponed. So while I had all the tools out I decided to the rocker covers of the engine, they were going a little surface rusty and didn’t look to pretty. So like a man possessed I took the bolts out and removed the rockers. Then it hit me, the mixture of engine oil, fuel, metal and old car. That’s the smell of a classic car, or is it the smell of something leaking? I have mentioned it before, Eau De Mustang. I cleaned up the rockers and they have been rubbed down, treated, primed and painted, I’m not sure if it will work or not, but I will give it a go. I have pics and I will post them as soon as I have sorted them out, hopefully this week sometime. My postponed job i mentioned earlier, I manage to start today (Sunday) which was the inside of the front valance anti rust treatment. Again I have pictures of that little project ongoing as it stands at the moment, click here or go to the Photos Body Work section.

On another note, my new back gate. Yes it looks nice, but now it does not shut properly, it does if you push it at the bottom. The reason is it has warped badly at the bottom part. There is the thickness of the gate that it has moved about two inches. So if left on its own without shutting it properly via the latch you can see through the gap. I am not happy about it. I can’t complain as it’s wood and a natural substance. Does anybody have any ideas on how to get the gate back into shape? It’s gutting as the gate was perfect for about three weeks, then all of a sudden it has moved which is probably a result of the rain. Give me a classic Mustang any day to work on.

I just thought I would post a pic picture of the old set of shoes from the drivers side rear brakes, they say a picture speaks a thousand words. I had only three: OMG!

left rear damaged shoes

left rear damaged shoes

 
Mustang Maniac

The home to Classic Mustang Restorations

Bob's Garage Library

A library where you can drink a beer and play the stereo!

A Word in Your Ear

Stories and Photographs of my travels, Tales of friends, family, animals and my life

Atlas Tracer

Crossroads, articles, travel's ideas!

Cool McCool's Garage

What's Brian cutting up today?

GP evolved

Exploring Formula 1 Racing: Watching One Historic Grand Prix Race At a Time

HardRider

Great Rides down Great Roads to Great Places

Wish I Were Here

The literary journeys of J.D. Riso

Vintage Car Connection

CARavans, Cruising and Shows!

Classic Car Weekly

The Best Cars in the World

Pony-Up

American Muscle Car Blogspot

Kev Ollier

Notes from an incredibly shrinking Earth.

Karen Gadient

Ink Slinger in Inner Space

slightly sensitized

a TI's expirience of gang stalking

Miracle Corporation

Nothing But the Best

for the love of Nike

for the love of Nike

The Gullo Ford Blog

May the Ford be with You.

Ron Scubadiver's Wild Life

The Chronicle of an Independent Journalist

Moolta

The official Moolta Blog

PetrolBlog

A different spin

Stevens Virtual Automotive Museum

Perpetuating our passion for the automobile

rodalena

"A fool also is full of words…" -Ecclesiastes 10:14a

The Blue Notebook

What's this idiot on about now?

F1 SuperSwede

Your webazine about Formula 1 and other cool stuff!

traveleum

travel, fun & photography...

Kevin Glennon

Stories of Personal Perseverance

Just Cruisin 2

Where Intellectuals and Rednecks foregather.

The Jiggly Bits

...because life is funny.

Driven

Automotive culture under a microscope

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 112 other followers

%d bloggers like this: