72 Duster Resurrection

moparmat2000 said
For now if your just testing her out, i'd put all the drums back on if theres no evidence of leaks, power flush the lines with compressed air, bleed it, and (carefully) drive it. With it up on jacks after bleeding, have somebody press and hold the brake pedal, then go around the car and make sure each wheel thats up in the air doesnt turn with pedal depresssed. If somebodys pressing the brake pedal and you can turn a wheel or 2, then likely you have a frozen or sticking wheel cylinder at that wheel.

I recommend you do this check, and heres why.
Remember my buddy with the 68 el camino that we did the compressed air brakeline clean out i mentioned? We didnt do this check prior to a test drive, and one wheel cylinder was froze up. When he toed the brakes pretty strongly at 25 mph the car made a hard left because the right front side brake didnt grab. I had to check my pants after i punched him in the arm.

I bet that one made you pucker up for sure. I'd like to avoid that ride if I can so I will be sure to test both wheels while its jacked up.

moparmat2000 said
When you get ready for real to drive this thing for awhile with those drum brakes at the very least change out all 3 flexable rubber lines, and the old master cylinder, and put some new shoes on it for safetys sake

Agreed, I'll need to rebuild the whole drum kit if I want to drive a bit more seriously, but....

I think I found out why there is no fluid in the front brake system.

I pulled the front passenger drum. Everything looked normal:

I removed both front bleed screws and blasted the master cylinder hole with my compressor as discussed. Some fluid sprayed out of both bleeder holes then they both started spraying out air.

I went to put the bleeders back in so I could re-fill the system with brake fluid. The driver side bleeder went in fine but the passenger side felt like it was just spinning in its threads. I take a closer look and hear a piece of something fall out. This is what fell:

Its a chunk of the steel from the slave cylinder right where the threads of the bleeder screw are. If you look closely at this pic, you can see a chunk of the metal missing from the top of the bleeder hole.

So the passenger side needs at least a new slave cylinder. Which means I need to completely disassemble the passenger side brakes....

Should I just rebuild the whole thing while im here? New shoes, springs, hose, etc

Should I do the driver side also so the car does not pull to one side?