Ultimate Master / Booster?

Well, I bought it, installed it on the red 'vert (see sticky thread above), and it's sitting in a pile on my floor right now.

I'll give them some benefit of the doubt first. I've seen the setup on vehicles at shows and heard great things about it. I've also seen it set up on the bench at their display booth at the 2005 Hot Rod & Restoration trade show with pressure gauges and everything and that's what convinced me to try it.

The background is simple. With the 4.6 DOHC in the '67 I didn't have the room for a vacuum booster, and had problems even fitting the hydroboost because of where I placed the engine. I saw this system and thought it would be the ultimate solution -- a master cylinder about like a manual one, with very strong power brakes, and something like 25 stops after power failure.

The booster/accumulator unit is fairly large. The only place I could find for it was up in the driver's side fenderwell. It's heavy too, so I didn't want to just mount it through the thin apron sheet metal. I made a thick steel backing plate for the other side, which was nicely hidden behind my remote oil filter. Here's what the unit looks like:



I had first tried to use the remote reservoir master cylinder because of the aforementioned clearance problem with the cam cover. I couldn't find anywhere good to mount the large cylindrical reservoir though that would be above the master, and due to that and another configuration issue I sent it back. They also came up with the idea of using their billet reservoir but offsetting it away from the engine, so that's what I tried next:



There are many ports on the master, some of which are unused, so you can specify how you want the fittings done and they plug the others with pipe plugs. I needed my fittings to come out of the side away from the engine, so that worked out well.

Once I mounted the master, the first issue that came up was pedal height. It comes with an adjustable pushrod, but adjusted all the way down the pedal was still waaaay to high, like 4 inches. I tried both a power and manual pedal. They say it's designed to use the manual pedal, but it was still mega-high. Soooo, the master came back out and I cut the threaded part of the pushrod down. That made the pushrod length right, but they had supplied a "teardrop" type part that connects to the pedal, and I needed a straight one (like an original manual master cylinder) to get everything to line up straight. Luckily, I had one in my junk collection and was able to proceed with a nice pedal height.

Since they had configured the ports custom for me, they directly labeled the master cylinder indicating which port was for the front brakes, which was for the rear, and which was for the pressure line coming from the booster unit. This configuration was different from the instruction sheet that came with the kit as well as from the instruction sheet on their website. I figured it was due to my special configuration, and after all the master cylinder was labeled right on it. I made up all of the lines and plumbed it as you can see in the pic.

I filled the reservoir with fluid, pumped the pedal a few times, and the thing leaked everywhere. The two unused ports on the master cylinder that were plugged from the factory leaked very badly. Out comes the master...

After tons of screwing around with the plugs I got them to seal. Thinking I was finally out of the woods I started to bleed the brakes. The rears went fine, but I couldn't get a drop of fluid out of the fronts. I pulled the "front" fitting from the master cylinder and had someone push the pedal. Not only did no fluid squirt out, but that port had suction on the downstroke of the pedal! It must have been one of the ports that could have been used for the power line from the booster.

Instead of giving up at that point, I figured I'd try one of the "plugged" ports to see if it was one of the options for the front brake circuit. I plugged the bogus front port and used the only one of the "plugged" ones I could access. It provided fluid pressure, but drew out of the same half of the reservoir as the rear circuit...must be one of the other plumbing options for the rear.

At this point I was quite frustrated, and was facing pulling the master cylinder again and sending it back to them again for reconfiguration, and eating another couple of weeks delay on the car. Thus why the system is in a pile on the shop floor.

I spent a little time finding the right size and configuration master cylinder for manual brakes and bolted it in. With the 4-piston Wilwoods at all four corners it stops great!

YMMV, but that was my experience, for what it's worth.