Brakes?

3/14

The car has already undergone a rear disc conversion (280zx), but something was wrong.

Well that was the first thing we decided to take a look at.

Turns out the placement of the calipers along with the e-brake bracket (probably not the correct term) caused the e-brake bracket to hit the brake hose and tear it open on both sides of the car. As the suspension traveled upward, the bracket landed perfectly on the brake hose. That’s probably not the ideal situation when installing calipers. So we are going to flip the calipers to the opposite sides of the car (which I believe based on reading conversion instructions, is the way it’s supposed to be installed). This way the bracket is not pointing upwards towards the brake hose.

This is what it looks like – see the brake hose at the top?

Ordered some brake hose, but now have to wait till they arrive to finish that up.  While we are waiting we have cleaned up the calipers and are going to paint them so that they are not rust colored!

 

3/21

So we got the brake calipers painted, finally got the stainless steel brake hoses, put it all together. We found that because of the way the e-brake bracket is situated on the caliper (from a 280zx), flipping it so that it was facing downward (so that the bracket cleared the brake hose) was problematic in itself. The e-brake cable was taking the route of the least resistance which would be basically sitting on the drive shaft. Gene did some fancy routing and hanger placement so that it clears everything and all is good now.

After all of that we tried to bleed the brakes/master cylinder. We couldn’t get them bled.

We tried several times but the pedal remained soft. We also heard a gurgling sound coming from under the dash which we think is probably the master brake cylinder. Quite possibly the seals in the master cylinder had already been compromised. I ordered a rebuilt one and it should be here today. We are going to bench bleed it and try it again. Hopefully that will fix the problem.

We also found that the oil pan is covered in oil that has leaked out of it for who knows how long. There are missing bolts and the gasket is most likely bad. I ordered a new one. When the brakes are good, that will be the next thing to tackle.

 

3/24

So the problem may have been one of two things, more likely the first of the two.  After looking at the calipers again…  The rears were in place correctly, but the fronts were reversed, I inadvertently put them on the wrong sides which put the bleeder on the bottom.  Air trapped in the line would never come out in this position.  I removed  and swapped them.

Since we already had the new master cylinder also, we decided to swap that out too, since we could never be sure if it was also bad.

The bench bleeding was a lot of fun.  NOT.   Talk about brake fluid all over the place.  Eventually though, we got all the air out and put it in, bled everything on the car and voila, BRAKES!  finally.

 

4/1

Found out that the front right caliper was seized.  Was a bitch to loosen it and remove it, but Gene managed to get it out.  We cleaned it and replaced it, the boot was fine and so was the gasket inside.  It works now just fine.

 

4/2

Well the problem returned.  The SS brake hose is now kinked on both sides in the rear.

 

4/5

Removed all the components of the rear brake conversion.  Here are the pics of everything, all different angles.

 

 

Found that the rear stainless steel hoses were too long and when the car was in motion, the parking brake bracket hit it on the “loop” and push it up so that it eventually got kinked.

The fix for that was going back to standard rubber hoses in the rear.

 

After all that was fixed, we found that the brakes worked but not very well.  A ton of pressure had to be applied in order to stop the car – not very safe.  After talking a to a friend (who happens to know a lot about s30s), we decided to do what he suggested and get a 280zx master cylinder (15/16).  When that came in, in the middle of changing it out, we decided to check the brake booster.  After we removed it, we found that it had about 2.5 cups worth of hydraulic fluid in it.  Needless to say, it was bad, and well past the point of no return.  We decided to order a reman’d one (the larger 10″ as opposed to what the car originally had, which was the 8.5″).

That came in, we installed the larger booster, the new (used) larger master cylinder (after bench bleeding), bled the brake system and now everything works as it should!!!!!!!

Here’s a couple of pics of the larger brake booster in the 280z, no problems with fitment.