Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

Is it two weeks yet?

Back up in the air, again. Note the downward slope of the driveway,
it's not an optical illusion.

Sometimes you just have to do the work, at least that what I tell myself. There's no other way it's going to get fixed without me crawling around underneath and sticking my hands up into it's greasy bits. There was quite a bit of crawling around covered in the last installment, and I can still feel  that in my aching joints. I haven't started rebuilding the rear wheel cylinders yet. I figured that I would remove the rest of the hydraulics and do the work in the comfort of my garage.

Always use redundant support systems.

The driveway is pretty steep, enough that having the car roll forward while being jacked up is a real hazard. It important to have the wheels on the opposite end well chocked. The ramps are quite useful in that they keep the under  the car space open. You can even have the ramps pointed towards the front, which opens it up even more. I never drive the car up the ramps, I jack the car up and place them under the wheels. They were backed up with an additional pair of jack stands and the floor jack. I had adequate, but not excessive room to work underneath.

This is where the clutch master cylinder lives.

Removing these components meant wriggling under the car on my back, I haven't used a creeper in many years.  That just requires raising the car up another four inches. I really don't like raising the car more than I have to. Especially while it's facing downhill in the driveway.

Stick your hands up in there. it's as much fun as it looks.

Those flex pipes are for the exhaust.

This is the clutch slave cylinder, pretty easy to reach.

The guts of the hydraulics laid out for dissection.

That reservoir at the top of the tray is for the brake fluid. It's actually made of glass, I wouldn't have guessed, it was pretty dirty. Directly below it is the brake master cylinder, the brake light switch is built into the back. What just looks like an old can of brake fluid is actually the original clutch fluid reservoir. Underneath the brake m/c is the clutch m/c. To the left of that is the clutch slave cylinder. This set up is much like the one in my old Datsun 280Z.

It doesn't look much better close up.

Just as a side note I found out that the glass brake reservoir was also used for several years on the Bentley Continental. Probably on most Bentleys and Rollers of the era, since it is part of the Girling brake system. I'll grab whatever connection to glory that I can!


There's going to be quite a bit of disassembling to do. I was successful using the grease gun method before, so I hope to have similar results. I will have to flush and clean the reservoirs and blow out the brake lines with compressed air. It's going to be a messy job!