CUSTOM STOPPING POWER

INSTALLING A MASTER CYLINDER AND POWER BOOSTER KIT ON A UNIQUE CHASSIS

The area where the booster will be mounted was sanded to bare metal. It is located just behind the boxed front section of the frame.

If you own a Ford or Chevy, most of the parts you will need to build a street rod are readily available, and from a variety of suppliers. We have written numerous stories about kits for these cars in our family of rodding magazines, and some of them were a direct replacement for the original. By and large, they worked perfectly and bolted right in, as designed. These types of kits are convenient for many street rod builders, as well as street rod shops, and they are part of what has helped grow our hobby into such a broad special-interest group. But in addition to the “normal” and most popular rods, there were many other great cars made in the pre-war era, and some of them can be a real challenge to street rodders because there are no pre-manufactured parts, and no kits that make them easy to build. Sounds like the old days, right? Well, that’s the modern world for you–even our hobbies have become targets of convenience.

The booster bracket was connected to the frame bracket with the four bolts in the kit. These bolts are difficult to access after the bracket is welded to the frame, so Shirer tacked the bolts to the inside of the bracket.

Shirer held the bracket in position to make sure the pedal had the travel that it needed. The clearance on the engine and the bellhousing looked fine. Note the small round notch in the firewall that was used for original pedal clearance. Judging by the firewall notch, this pedal sits exactly where the original brake pedal was located.

While Shirer was holding the booster and bracket in place, he tack welded one end of the bracket.

As you read in our story on Tom Lawson (“An Unusual Upgrade,”), who took his car to Dream Cars in Simi Valley, California, once he decided to make a street rod out of an old ’27 Chrysler, he wanted to do it right but needed guidance. While his original plan was to restore the old ’27, he has always been a street rodder, and so he finally decided that building the unusual car into a V-8-powered cruiser was the way to go.

Shire then moved to the other side of the bracket and made another tack weld. In all, two tack welds per side were made to hold the unit in place prior to final fitting.

The power booster and master cylinder assembly looks as if it were designed for this car. The pedal enters the car at the same location as the original, which will make driving more comfortable.

His decision was to turn the old Chrysler into a nostalgic street rod, and Dream Cars got the job of doing the chassis upgrade. The plan was to install four-wheel independent suspension and a big Chrysler engine. In the process of installing the new Total Cost Involved Engineering (TCI) IFS front suspension, there were, of course, auxiliary components and systems that had to be addressed, and one of them was the power brake system and pedal assembly.

Shirer made sure the pedal was located correctly by depressing it to see if had the necessary clearance. The pedal was located close to the bellhousing and the engine, but there was 3/4-inch clearance and that was perfectly fine. When Shirer knew that the pedal assembly would work in its present location, the assembly was disassembled so the base bracket could be welded to the frame.

Shirer started by removing the master cylinder from the power booster. The booster will have to be bench-bled prior to bleeding the system.

The pedal rod was disconnected from the power booster plunger, and then the four bolts holding the booster onto the bracket were disconnected and the booster was removed.

Dream Cars owner Don Shirer has been building street rods for a long time, and when he wanted to install a power booster, he had to think about some of the cars he had done in the past in order to come up with a booster assembly that would work in this one-off Chrysler. Shirer inspected the chassis, took some measurements and concluded that a ’36-’48 Chevy power booster kit would work. He contacted TCI, discussed his plans and ordered a kit. In the process, he upgraded the 7-inch booster to an 8-inch model and incorporated a Corvette-style master cylinder because it was his experience that they work great with the Wilwood brakes used in the TCI IFS assembly, also a part of this upgrade.

Here is the base bracket after it has been welded. This may well be the perfect bracket for a variety of other applications in other rare models, so be sure to check it out.

The four bolts holding the booster bracket to the base bracket were also removed.

After the complete assembly was removed, it was easy to final weld the base bracket to the frame.

After the bracket was welded on and allowed to cool, the components were reassembled in the car. This pedal assembly works perfectly in this application, and it looks as if it were made for this Chrysler. This, of course, saved considerable time and money.

As it turned out, the Chevy kit looked as if it were designed for this Chrysler application, so Shirer’s keen eye and vast experience paid off handsomely. It saved him from fabricating many of the install parts that would otherwise be necessary to adapt the modern braking system. We bring you this installation not because we expect that many of you are presently in the process of building a ’27 Chrysler, but because if you are building something that is unusual and there are no kits available, this booster and bracket might be exactly what you are looking for. Or there may be other over-the-counter items that would work just as easily as this one did in this application. The broad understanding and the many oddball combinations that have now become street rods can all provide you homebuilders with new hope that there just might be a simpler way to accomplish your objectives. In this case, the parts were of quality construction, and they were extremely easy to fit and install. To us that rings of cash savings over the long haul. See if you don’t agree.