Well, you guys told me to clean up my engine bay, so I am putting a new master cylinder in.... Does anyone have any tips or tricks before I get started? Thanks!
Really pretty easy, particularly with power brakes because you don't have to jack with the pedal, just 4 nuts on the booster. I painted mine gloss black first, then bench bled it in my vise (I clamped the vise on one of the mounting ears), and installed it as carefully as I could so as not to goof up the paint right away. In the end, I didn't need one afterall, but now it's the purtiest thing under the hood.
bench bleeding. I've found that there's really no need to bleed it out of the car. Just bolt it in and before you connect the lines, run hoses from the ports feeding back into itself. That way you can just carefully pump on the pedal intead of having to mess around pushing the plunger a screwdriver (or whatever you use) and then installing it quickly, trying not to spill brake fluid all over your fender and firewall. Just my two cents.
Make sure you use flare wrenches. The brake lines are very easy to round off without the proper wrenches. I think I disconnected the rod from the brake pedal and removed the master cyl+rod together from the car, so I didn't have to fight it off the rod under the hood. When I put it back in, I just hooked everything back up and then gravity bled the system. They worked great. Even for drum brakes. Here's a tip, soak it down with some wd-40 or something before removing it, so you don't take a chance breaking off a bolt or something.
