Weird, very discouraging I hope I have good luck. Did you ever get any answers on as to why this is the case with new cylinders? They vary from $20 remanufactured to like $80 new.

 

Never got an answer as to why those master cylinders were bad out of the box. Each time they took them back due to being bad out of the box and gave me another one.

It can be very discouraging, however I took it as lots of experience doing one type of job. It's not always the case, and I always hope that mine was a rare case, but you never know right? All in all, you need your brakes tho, so just get'r done

 

Will do this weekend.

Why is my brake booster connected through a check valve and into my throttle body (in red) wouldn't it work better if I moved the line to my vac tree on the intake manifold??

 

Makes no difference it is still under vacuum as it is after the throttle plate .

 

I removed the master cylinder and this is all I can see...is this the diaphragm I thought it would be the diameter of the booster shell? I wiped it out good before installing the new cylinder



What are these sleepy seed looking things all over the old cylinder? They almost look like grains of salt or something? Also the old cylinder has a purple plunger does this indicate it was or was not an original 1988 factory part???





I took a puddy knife and wire brush to the peeling paint and rust, cleaned up the booster before installing the new cylinder:

 

Ok SO, bench bleeding did not workout they did not include a kit so I tried making one out of brake fittings and bending brake line up to pour back in the reservoir but it was not working. I had to use larger brake line then 3/16" so I'm not sure if that was the culprit but it's what I had on hand. Long story short the master ended up being installed un-bled and I had someone work the pedal while I bled the wheels and they pushed apparently harder then I have and it blew the fitting on the rear center flex hose and this is where the story begins...

At this point I replaced all the steel lines in the rear, center flex, and the bleeders were frozen in the front so I had to replace both calipers. Now I am looking at the front flex hoses because I am sketched out about the rear hose, drivers and passengers side hoses below:




Now I am looking at the crossover line for the front passenger that runs along the cross member and it looks like its completely disintegrating, drivers side too...pisses me off my grandfather replaced the line running from the proportioning valve to the rear flex 5 years ago when the brakes failed when my aunt was using it and she hit a telephone pole with the truck. Then sold it to me for granted $300 but did not even point out how bad the brakes are and he is a mechanic, I got a great deal on the truck but still he is so ignorant sometimes. This is what the solid line looked like in the front!




With everything finally holding pressure I needed to refill the entire system or at least 90% of it so I did, and tried this myself using one of those 1-man hand pumps connected to the bleeder to suck out the fluid and I got a small amount of fluid then just air, air, and more air I gave up. My grandfather came down and opened the bleeders for me while I pumped the brakes and did it that way...got brake fluid all over everything underneath all over my fenders he did a great job "nahh it's fine" was his reply to that. Of course I don't want him all greased up in my truck on the new leather seats I installed to pump the brakes so I loose no matter what, I took it out for a drive the brakes were better then ever but they soon squished up after driving and I began loosing pedal. I have to pump the brakes 2-3 times before I get good pressure so there must be deff air in the system we only bled each wheel twice took 10min I am guessing we drained the air from the lines but now it is working it's way out of the new master cylinder and into the lines?

Would I have to bleed it less if I continued driving having to pump the brakes around locally (small back road town) and throw all the air I can out of the MC and into the lines assuming it always makes its way to the end of the lines so when I open them up I will get nothing but tons of air at each wheel a few times instead of bleeding the wheels 10 times each?

Think now that I have pressure to all the wheels that hand vacuum bleeder will work to finish this?

Has anyone seen this way of doing it with a hose and a bottle with brake fluid in it? Leaving the bleeder open while pumping the brakes?

 

thats the way i bleed them. it works well if the hose goes to the bottom of the bottle because it suck the fluid in while pushing the air bubbles out. i still like to have someone pump the brake pedal while i watch the air bubbles come out so i can close the bleeder when its done and to keep the bottle from overflowing. i actually just got in from bleeding the brakes on my dakota.

 

Sounds like you combine pressure bleeding with vacuum bleeding unless you are referring to the bottle video? I am going to bleed all four wheels a few more times tomorrow and see what I get.

 

I've used the bottle method and it works great. I just had to bleed the brakes on my trailer a couple of weeks ago, and it worked great for that, too. In fact, it's about the only way to do the trailer without a pressure bleeder.

I also like to have somebody else pump the brakes while I watch the bottle.