First time having manual brakes, are mine bad?
Finally finished up the brakes yesterday and they literally few the same as before. Pretty bummed about it. Here’s the specs. Any help would be appreciated. About to bring the car to a shop to make sure I’m not missing something. Pedal is hard and the stopping power is down right dangerous for road use in my opinion.
All brand spanking new:
Aluminum master cylinder
Full inline tube line kit
Stainless hoses front and rear
Seals replaced on 2 front calipers
Semi metallic pads front
Drilled slotted power stop rotors front
Shoes and hardware rear
DOT 5 fluid
No bubbles on bleed
What
specifically are the brakes doing?
-Are you able to lock up any/all of the wheels during braking?
-You say the pedal is hard, what is the travel like? Can you depress the pedal at least a few inches with effort? Or is it rock hard and not moving?
-have you followed the bedding procedure for the new brake pads/shoes?
Do you have any pictures of how everything is hooked up?
Ok got lost in the OP with multiple posts. Disc front drum back. Got it. Don’t beat me up for trying to help.
having said that simple imo. Back brakes most likely not working. Check pressure. Many posts have made reference to smaller MC better. I would still Jack the car up and try to turn the wheel with brakes applied as a simple test if you don’t have a gauge.
Good luck- done
I’m not trying to beat you up, but it seems like you’re making very general recommendations with a lot of speculation on master cylinder bore etc. There’s a lot of advice being given for the OP right now -which is great, but if we overwhelm the OP with completely unrelated information or speculation it stops being helpful.
A quick search here on FABO will show you that the factory master cylinders ranged from 15/16 to 1-1/32”, and that a lot of the members running manual disks prefer the 15/16” master cylinder bore diameter. But any master cylinder in that range should stop the car just fine, like you said, it’s just fluid dynamics and the components the OP is running have been shown to work great on other cars.
And it’s entirely too soon to say it’s the back brakes, because we simply don’t have enough evidence to say that. The OP has a bunch of new parts, a bunch of old parts that sat for awhile, and there are
lots of different issues that could be causing the issue. 70-80% of the braking is done by the front, so if the braking is scary it’s much more likely a problem with the front, or a systemic issue affecting everything
Are you 100% sure of the master cylinder bore size? That's ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
Sounds like it’s a new one from DoctorDiff, which would mean it’s either 15/16” or 1-1/32”, as those are his options. Either should work fine as long as everything is hooked up correctly.
