Weak Brakes

[KettleCarver]

My '66 Mark Ia did not come with a brake booster. With all the stories I have heard about them failing, I thought I would just use the manual brakes. I installed a new master cylinder and rebuilt the calipers with new seals and stainless steel pistons. The system has no leaks. I have bled the system thoroughly.

As the title says, the brakes are weaker than I am comfortable with. I was thinking of changing to a more aggressive pad. For those of you that don't use a booster, what kind of pads do you use?

Any other suggestions to improve the braking power would be welcome too.

Thanks,

Marty

 

[65beam]

My '66 Mark Ia did not come with a brake booster. With all the stories I have heard about them failing, I thought I would just use the manual brakes. I installed a new master cylinder and rebuilt the calipers with new seals and stainless steel pistons. The system has no leaks. I have bled the system thoroughly.

As the title says, the brakes are weaker than I am comfortable with. I was thinking of changing to a more aggressive pad. For those of you that don't use a booster, what kind of pads do you use?

Any other suggestions to improve the braking power would be welcome too.

Thanks,

Mar

Series 1 and 2 Alpines did not use a booster. They used the .70 bore brake master versus the .875 bore used on boosted systems and a different size bore rear wheel cylinder versus the ones used with boosted system. You'll find many cars without a booster have the .70 bore brake master used on series 1 and 2 Alpines as well as the rear wheel cylinders from series 2 Alpines. After a couple brake booster failures years ago this setup was suggested to me by Doug at Tiger Auto. I have a couple of my later series Alpines without boosters that are set up this way. The brakes present no problems. Another option is to use the Lockheed booster. They don't have the failures of the Girling units used by Rootes prior to switching to Lockheed hydraulics when Rootes ceased production of Tigers and series Alpines. These can be bought from Moss. Sunbeam Specialties or Classic Sunbeam may stock them also.

 

[Austin Healer]

Rebuildable cores for the Girling Mk2 unit are becoming hard to source... The Lockheed or ATE booster units are a good alternative, as long as you do not mind the different appearance. The other suggestion of the smaller diameter master is also another solution.

If a good rebuildable core Girling unit can be found, they are a breeze to rebuild.