hydroboost brakes

for a long time I had been considering adding a brake booster to my canadian 66 valiant (same as dart) but the new OE style boosters where ranging around $400 where I live, and well I don't exactly have that kind of money at the moment. my boss had a fairly new chev diesel with hydroboost and I asked him how the brakes "felt" compared to normal vacuum ones, he said pulling a 24' camper was no problem to slow down, as well as the car hauler

so I put an add on Kijiji looking for a hydroboost system, looking for any model of vehicle. A guy emailed me and said he had a 1994 chev 3/4 4x4 diesel that he was junking and wanted $25 for it. I went to his place and removed it and bought it back to "test" fit on the valiant at first glance it seemed that the resivoir would hit the drivers side valve cover, but I was told it could be flipped upside down and still work (it will) so with that info I measured for the bolts to bolt it on the fire wall cut down the plate on the hydroboost so it would mount flat on my firewall. I had to measure and drill two top holes in order to use the factory mounting studs on the car.

now for the lines, after some digging around I found that cavailers/sunfires use the same fittings for the fuel line near the rear (they have special O ring fittings) the fuel line repair kit was $9 and included all the special fittings I needed. for the pushrod on the master cylinder I used a bolt to figure out what lenth the rod needed to be, after figuring out it needed to be 4 1/4" long I took my measurements to a machine shop who did it up for me in his spare time for $20. with the dodge master cylinder bolted on I faberated the inside pushrod myself by welding the old pushrod to the hydroboost system.

with the first test drive I had to be very careful, because the brakes are very touchy and could easy lock up all 4 wheels with drum brakes. after a bit of driving I got used to how it responed