Indyman Joe's (Near) Death Cruise

[Frosty]

I was setting at home watching TV after a long day of mowing what seemed like foot high grass, and I get these photos sent to me from Indyman Joe. WTF?

 

I called Joe immediately! It seems he had gone to Baker's of Milford, near his place, doing the maiden test voyage of his new 9" Ford rear end. Leaving Baker's he went to apply the brakes and the pedal went straight to the floor. He had no brakes!!! Thank God his emergency brakes worked and it slowed him down and brought him to an eventual stop in a parking lot.

Once he stopped, he called his son to bring his van and the trailer to get Joe the rest of the way home. Joe was only 2 miles from home when this happened.

 

 

Joe said he definitely needed clean underwear after that near-death cruise. Who wouldn't?

 

Good job Joe -  for bringing this baby to stop and not hurting anyone, especially yourself !!!

 

Joe said this is not an original Delco Moraine brake booster, rather it is a reproduction. He is calling the company he bought it from and letting them know what he thinks of their reproduction. He said he will be looking into a new booster from the likes of Willwood and other aftermarket brake manufacturers.

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by Frosty

[Ringo64]

Oh my! Hope he wore his brown pants there. Definitely good to hear nobody and nothing was hurt in the process! 

44 minutes ago, Frosty said:

He is calling the company he bought it from and letting them know what he thinks of their reproduction.

Probably has a few choice words...

[Frosty]

1 hour ago, Ringo64 said:

Oh my! Hope he wore his brown pants there. Definitely good to hear nobody and nothing was hurt in the process! 

Probably has a few choice words...

I suspect pants were brown after the ride regardless of the color he wore.

I'll bet mother trucker will be among those choice words.

[indymanjoe]

I was shaking for an hour afterwards. Make sure your Emergency brakes work. This is the second time i had this happen. Not the booster but rotted out GM brake lines on my buddys truck. He never put the e-brake cable back on and well that made it more interesting. 

[JUSTA6]

Sooo glad your alright buddy.  Worth every penny and time spent to have your E brake working.

[TWO LANE BLACK TOP]

 Have seen quite a few catastrophic mechanical failures through the years...Never anything like that.... Glad everything turned out OK....No one injured and nothing torn up....

Edited May 6, 2019 by TWO LANE BLACK TOP

[Frosty]

2 hours ago, TWO LANE BLACK TOP said:

 Have seen quite a few catastrophic mechanical failures through the years...Never anything like that.... Glad everything turned out OK....No one injured and nothing torn up....

Amen brother.

[SPRINT 6]

Glad all ended well. Would love to know the brand and how the suppler handles this.  Cheers.

[Ringo64]

2 hours ago, SPRINT 6 said:

Would love to know the brand and how the suppler handles this.

[Last Indian]

18 hours ago, indymanjoe said:

I was shaking for an hour afterwards. Make sure your Emergency brakes work. This is the second time i had this happen. Not the booster but rotted out GM brake lines on my buddys truck. He never put the e-brake cable back on and well that made it more interesting. 

Glade you’re OK Joe! Things like that have a way of making you appreciate what’s important!

looking at the pictures below it appears they never staked the outer housing locks! Those are supposed to be indent flattened behind the protruding spare of the inner housing to keep the unit together. Their not, or so it appears.

On 5/6/2019 at 9:36 AM, Frosty said:

I was setting at home watching TV after a long day of mowing what seemed like foot high grass, and I get these photos sent to me from Indyman Joe. WTF?

 

I called Joe immediately! It seems he had gone to Baker's of Milford, near his place, doing the maiden test voyage of his new 9" Ford rear end. Leaving Baker's he went to apply the brakes and the pedal went straight to the floor. He had no brakes!!! Thank God his emergency brakes worked and it slowed him down and brought him to an eventual stop in a parking lot.

Once he stopped, he called his son to bring his van and the trailer to get Joe the rest of the way home. Joe was only 2 miles from home when this happened.

 

 

Joe said he definitely needed clean underwear after that near-death cruise. Who wouldn't?

 

Good job Joe -  for bringing this baby to stop and not hurting anyone, especially yourself !!!

 

Joe said this is not an original Delco Moraine brake booster, rather it is a reproduction. He is calling the company he bought it from and letting them know what he thinks of their reproduction. He said he will be looking into a new booster from the likes of Willwood and other aftermarket brake manufacturers.

 

 

[Last Indian]

JustA as a point fact. I doubt that the booster is harmed. You could, and I would clearly understand why you would prefer not to, reassemble the unit and stake the outer cover back on correctly. 

If for any reason you decide to do that and you want some input let me know!

[indymanjoe]

I may try that Gary..alot easier than changing it again. thinking of going with this set up now (possibly) I have a new appreciation for stopping now LOL

https://www.performanceonline.com/1967-72-Chevy-Chevelle-Hydro-Boost-Power-Brake-Booster-Kit/

[Last Indian]

Joe, This video shows what I mean about the staking, as good as me trying to explain it.

[JUSTA6]

1 hour ago, indymanjoe said:

I may try that Gary..alot easier than changing it again. thinking of going with this set up now (possibly) I have a new appreciation for stopping now LOL

https://www.performanceonline.com/1967-72-Chevy-Chevelle-Hydro-Boost-Power-Brake-Booster-Kit/

Have not even heard of a booster coming apart like that, let alone seen it.   Same for your Hydro boost...that's different!

[indymanjoe]

The hydro boost is nice as it doesnt need vacuum. But its more small stuff as opposed to the power booster. Still researching it more. i see some folks using it at the car shows. I just want it to be factory looking. Not a cobbled up mess.

[Wrongway]

Damn bro! Glad your ok man

 

[indymanjoe]

Well. Inline tube has agreed to replace the one that came apart.$13 to ship it to me. They also have said they never heard of this happening. I really wish someone could say yea ya dumbarse you did this or that wrong LOL. Then i could sleep better with the new one coming. Tired of researching brake systems at this point so i will probably install the new one. Over the winter i will be looking into the hydro boost or a bigger diameter bore of the master cyl or a dual diaphragm corvette style etc. PS   make sure your E-brake works!  

[Ringo64]

Dang. Well, least you’re getting another. Hopefully it was just a defective part that you had. Be careful!

[Last Indian]

On 5/11/2019 at 11:46 PM, indymanjoe said:

Well. Inline tube has agreed to replace the one that came apart.$13 to ship it to me. They also have said they never heard of this happening. I really wish someone could say yea ya dumbarse you did this or that wrong LOL. Then i could sleep better with the new one coming. Tired of researching brake systems at this point so i will probably install the new one. Over the winter i will be looking into the hydro boost or a bigger diameter bore of the master cyl or a dual diaphragm corvette style etc. PS   make sure your E-brake works!  

Joe, assisted brakes are great & I understand the desire & the convenience of them.

But some food for thought is this. My Z pulled 4” of vacuum in gear at idle! So vacuum assisted brakes were never an option for me. So I set out to design a system that would out perform a power system. Something along those lines might work for you as well. I used a Corvette master cylinder that had an 1 1/8 or 1 / 3/16 bore, it’s been to long now to remember which one, as both existed. I ran no proportioning valve, I removed all the residual pressure check valves. I did some mods to the calipers, but I don’t think you would like to do them. I also changed the mechanical advantage of the pedal, as I indicated earlier. I ended up making my own pedal. In doing so I made the pedal 1” longer from the master cylinder push rod down to the end of the pedal & I shortened the pivot end of the pedal to the push rod 1/2”. That may not sound like much, but that increased pedal to fluid pressure by about 500 psi.

If you look close at the brake pedal in this picture of my wrecked Z (1977) you can see the stock steel pedal.

In the picture below is the corvette master cylinder (1980) 

In this picture below if you look you can see the new brake pedal made to change the mechanical advantage. It is aluminum.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Last Indian

[indymanjoe]

Hmmm food for thought for sure. Some folks do seem to like the manual brakes as well. Looks clean in your pics. Thanks for the info

What was done to the calipers? I'm up for a challenge 

 

[Last Indian]

On 5/13/2019 at 7:06 PM, indymanjoe said:

Hmmm food for thought for sure. Some folks do seem to like the manual brakes as well. Looks clean in your pics. Thanks for the info

What was done to the calipers? I'm up for a challenge 

 

Joe, I’ll put the info together shortly!

[Last Indian]

On 5/13/2019 at 7:06 PM, indymanjoe said:

Hmmm food for thought for sure. Some folks do seem to like the manual brakes as well. Looks clean in your pics. Thanks for the info

What was done to the calipers? I'm up for a challenge 

 

Joe, I’ll do my best to explain this in fare detail, but anything that I’m lacking please ask.

When I built the brake system for my Z I spent about 2 months doing research on function and materials. I then spent an other 3 months designing the system, doing the math etc. In the end I realized that there were things in a car braking system that made no sense. It may just be my opinion, but there are proven facts that support this. Why would you need a proportioning valve on a 4 wheel disc brake system, when the master cylinder stages the fluid appropriately? Why would anyone use a square cut O’ring to seal hydraulic fluid? Why would they run an ester based fluid as a hydraulic fluid? And why in all that is logical in physics would you run similar materials against each other? 

So in the case of the Z, I ran a much larger bore master cylinder as I said. I went from a 7/8” diameter piston to a 1.1875 or 1.25, as I said, I don’t remember which. I built my own calipers in the beginning, but I eventually moved to 4 of GM’s 2 15/16 diameter single piston caliper for ease of replacement parts if I ever needed them. Still these were modified, but not so much so that replacement parts were ever to be an issue. These are the calipers that you may be running. They were the standard for more that two decades. The standard pistons were plated and had a series of lines from top to bottom, made no sense! My modifications to this caliper were as follows. I made my own pistons out of stainless steel (304) and I would polish them to a high luster. I changed the O’rings to a standard Viton O’ring with dimension that correlated to the square cut part GM used. I also replaced the problematic caliper bolts these bolts are plated steel. Once you apply heat, water, acidic brake dust and in some cases road salt, but not necessary to activate corrosion and then add a Allen wrench embossed removal source and good luck with easy removal! I made stainless steel pieces with 9/16 hex. This made removal a piece of cake.

Likewise fluid is a key factor as I.E. can make a huge impact on performance. If you would like any more info let me know!

Similar work was done to the Indian. As a result it is nearly impossible to get the ABS system to activate because the car just stops before the wheels lockup. Only on very smooth roads in very wet weather does the ABS come on and only for a second.

 

Below is the brake caliper design I did for the Z. This was a full floating caliper that was set in double shear.

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by Last Indian