59 woes may not be the booster's fault

["Hugh & Therese" <hugtrees@xxxxxxxx>]

Bill,

 

It is truly, truly vital, that you find out where the problem is before you plow ahead and start fixing things that ain't broke.  I think your brakes are suffering because of poor engine performance and not the other way around.  I think you have a blown head gasket because this is a better way to describe the loss of compression on more than one cylinder.  The booster unit only takes vacuum from one cylinder, the one immediately in front of the driver, commonly known, I think as number eight.  If you lack compression on 4 & 6, I think you said, then I find it hard to blame the brakes.  Before you go the trouble and expense of changing the booster and all the attendant issues you will have will bleeding the brakes, etc, etc, you need to find out what the engines problems really are.

 

There is an easy way to check to see if it is the booster.  Remove the air hoses that go to it and use one of the hoses to simply run back to where the other one came from, thus simply cutting the brakes booster out of the loop. I have removed my booster unit several times.  It is quite a booger of a task.  A special wrench, one of the ones with a flexible metallic shaft, will prove to be invaluable as some of the nuts are hard to reach.  There are also two different sizes of nut.  Over the years at least some brake fluid will had found it way back there and you may find that the pins holding the nuts are corroded to a greater or lesser extent.  The manual is extremely useful under these circumstances.

 

Hugh

----- Original Message -----

From: Imperial59crown@xxxxxxx

To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 1:33 AM

Subject: IML: My '59 is back home

Well, after another soaking today, and I would not say a soaking, but rather a full on dunk, I got my baby back home again. This time I have vowed to never go back to that mechanic. After rebuilding supposedly the power steering box, giving it a tune up with new plugs and wires, rodding out the radiator, I got my car back with practically no brakes, and running slightly better than it did when I brought it in, and all for the meager price of $1,300.00! Parts were not the issue, but $855.00 for labor seemed a bit much. I got a copy of the compression test, and it is two cylinders next to each other which are weak, number 4, and 6. I have copied the mail from Richard about Karp's in Upland, California who rebuilds the boosters, and have decided this should be my next plan of attack. Question is: is the booster very hard to remove? I hate playing around with the brakes, since I have always liked my cars to stop when I wanted them to.

 

Bill '59 Crown