Category: Brakes

Brakes are (basically) done!

(03/31/2024)

This weekend I bolted the brake booster in for what I hope is the last time. I made a gasket for the lid and did my best at bending the nickel-copper lines. I then designed and 3d printed a small clip to hold the lines in place. It didn’t turn out too bad!

I started working on the throttle for the vehicle. Using the existing pedal because no modern electronic pedal will fit, but rather than using all the linkage over (that was used for the transmission kickdown and cruise control) I am running the cable right to the pedal. The issue is that the gap in the pedal had to be widened about .020″ – – which meant I had to do this sketchy thing:

Aside from all that I also cleaned up the instrument cluster mid plate and primed it. Hope the right color paint arrives this week and I can get the cluster going again!

Brakes are nearly complete

(03/24/2024)

I’ve been sick most of this weekend so I haven’t done much here. However, I have the brake box completely painted and assembled for (hopefully) the last time. I need to make a new throttle ingress plate first before I bolt this to the car, but I’m close. I also mounted the brake proportioning valve and plumbed that in.

It’s been close to two years since I started the taillight portion of the project, but I finally drew up the PCB for the taillight controller. I have sent this out to Oshpark to make a board and hopefully no mistakes!

More brakes and making chips

(02/12/2024)

I made some progress this weekend on the brake pivot. I machined out the actual pivot piece from aluminum once I was (fairly) confident that the plastic mock up was right.

This was a chunk of 6161 cut off from eBay to turn into what we see in red:

Cutting that down:

And now machine to match…

Next was a test fit in the car before I started making the hinge part out of plastic:

The plastic part seems fairly straight forward, I’m using two of the bolts for the pedal box to sandwich it all together:

As this is a test I wanted to get fluid in the system. Not a bad flare for the first time on Nickle-Copper lines for me.

Everything in place, fluid is in and it works! It looks like I have a rubber line on the front passenger that may be collapsed, but those are original lines from 38 years ago, so worth a change anyway.

I will eventually have this proportioning valve for the rear brakes and the spacing looks nearly perfect if I mount it here.

Lastly I have the rubber line off the side I think is bad, I was able to push back the cylinder (good sign) and new rubber lines will be here later this week: