I learned something unpleasant about my preferred model of Ford trucks. In 1978 - 1979 Ford in their infinite wisdom used 3 separate types of brake booster & of course none of them interchange & all of the differences is in the rod from the pedal to the booster. The first two are almost identical, just a matter of whether or not the eye of the bolt is offset or not & they're both not that expensive. But the third type has a short little rod & a retarded system to get it to the pedal & cost three times as much.
Guess which one I needed for the 3/4 ton. Yup, $360 for a brake booster. But damn does it ever have nice brakes now. For a 45 year old truck anyway.
I'm no professional school taught mechanic, but I'm pretty sure that when shit starts falling off / out of the booster it's a good sign that it's bad. Just a wild ass guess. A "mechanic" put that master cylinder on before I bought it, you'd think he'd have noticed. Maybe.
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And the new Chineseium hotness.
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This one goes for a new windshield this week & them hopefully tags.
Now for the brakes on the 1 ton. I have absolutely nothing nice to say here, nothing.
The brakes on it have been just about completely rebuilt & were complete garbage. I suspect that it came down to two separate problems. 1: the master cylinder was just about shot. The rear brakes were just about no existing at best & the front weren't much better. 2: I suspect someone may have put a cam in it at some point. I sounds a little lumpy but more importantly I put a vacuum gauge on it & it's not enough vacuum to run the brake booster. The booster wants 16 - 18 inches of vacuum pressure, I'm not producing 16 inches. More like 10 to 14.
But fear not! For there is a solution. I now use the same braking system as a 2000 something super duty.
Hydroboost.
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The wife installed most all of it too.
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This just about almost worked out perfectly. Except for one tiny little oversight on my part. I've still have the old Thompson steering pump & I didn't order fittings for said pump and I sure as hell won't use one of those garbage ass Ford C2 pumps. It's either get fitting for a pump I planned to replace with a Saginaw conversion later or just do it now.
New pump & the conversion fiddly bits will hopefully be here this week.