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INSTALLING A MASTER CYLINDER AND POWER BOOSTER KIT ON A UNIQUE CHASSIS
If you own a Ford or Chevy, most of the parts you will need to build a street rod are readily available, and from a variety of suppliers. We have written numerous stories about kits for these cars in our family of rodding magazines, and some of them were a direct replacement for the original. By and large, they worked perfectly and bolted right in, as designed. These types of kits are convenient for many street rod builders, as well as street rod shops, and they are part of what has helped grow our hobby into such a broad special-interest group. But in addition to the “normal” and most popular rods, there were many other great cars made in the pre-war era, and some of them can be a real challenge to street rodders because there are no pre-manufactured parts, and no kits that make them easy to build. Sounds like the old days, right? Well, that’s the modern world for you–even our hobbies have become targets of convenience.
As you read in our story on Tom Lawson (“An Unusual Upgrade,”), who took his car to Dream Cars in Simi Valley, California, once he decided to make a street rod out of an old ’27 Chrysler, he wanted to do it right but needed guidance. While his original plan was to restore the old ’27, he has always been a street rodder, and so he finally decided that building the unusual car into a V-8-powered cruiser was the way to go.
His decision was to turn the old Chrysler into a nostalgic street rod, and Dream Cars got the job of doing the chassis upgrade. The plan was to install four-wheel independent suspension and a big Chrysler engine. In the process of installing the new Total Cost Involved Engineering (TCI) IFS front suspension, there were, of course, auxiliary components and systems that had to be addressed, and one of them was the power brake system and pedal assembly.
Dream Cars owner Don Shirer has been building street rods for a long time, and when he wanted to install a power booster, he had to think about some of the cars he had done in the past in order to come up with a booster assembly that would work in this one-off Chrysler. Shirer inspected the chassis, took some measurements and concluded that a ’36-’48 Chevy power booster kit would work. He contacted TCI, discussed his plans and ordered a kit. In the process, he upgraded the 7-inch booster to an 8-inch model and incorporated a Corvette-style master cylinder because it was his experience that they work great with the Wilwood brakes used in the TCI IFS assembly, also a part of this upgrade.
As it turned out, the Chevy kit looked as if it were designed for this Chrysler application, so Shirer’s keen eye and vast experience paid off handsomely. It saved him from fabricating many of the install parts that would otherwise be necessary to adapt the modern braking system. We bring you this installation not because we expect that many of you are presently in the process of building a ’27 Chrysler, but because if you are building something that is unusual and there are no kits available, this booster and bracket might be exactly what you are looking for. Or there may be other over-the-counter items that would work just as easily as this one did in this application. The broad understanding and the many oddball combinations that have now become street rods can all provide you homebuilders with new hope that there just might be a simpler way to accomplish your objectives. In this case, the parts were of quality construction, and they were extremely easy to fit and install. To us that rings of cash savings over the long haul. See if you don’t agree.
Article Sources
Total Cost Involved Engineering Inc.
909/984-1773
1416 West Brooks St. Ontario, CA 91762
