Power drum brake conversion question

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I am in the process of restoring my 68 fury and decided while the motor and steering column out, to upgrade the manual drum brakes to power drum. I picked up a booster-master combo with the new pedal rod and went to bolt it up; and found that the original mounting studs in the firewall plate are much closer together with the manual drum than with the new booster. Even the pedal rod hole in the plate looks like it should circular and not oblong as the original one is. Does this plate need to be changed and are there any other issues that may come up doing this?
 
The manual to power brake conversion requires a kit to make it work as the mountings and linkage are not the same.

See www.ssbrakes.com

If you google: "'68 fury converting from manual to power brakes", there is a tech article for this.

Dave
 
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Thanks, I will have to check into it. Most of the articles I was able find are for converting from Drum to power disc and not from manual to power drum. I have also seen a few plastic adapter brackets, but I would prefer not to go that route.
 
You need the power brake specific pedal...

I am in the process of restoring my 68 fury and decided while the motor and steering column out, to upgrade the manual drum brakes to power drum. I picked up a booster-master combo with the new pedal rod and went to bolt it up; and found that the original mounting studs in the firewall plate are much closer together with the manual drum than with the new booster. Even the pedal rod hole in the plate looks like it should circular and not oblong as the original one is. Does this plate need to be changed and are there any other issues that may come up doing this?
 
Thanks, I will have to check into it. Most of the articles I was able find are for converting from Drum to power disc and not from manual to power drum. I have also seen a few plastic adapter brackets, but I would prefer not to go that route.

Did your car have a 4 bolt manual master cylinder? If it is a 4 bolt type, you might just need the right brake pedal as '68 Plymouth has suggested, assuming you have the right power brake booster, probably a single clamp type. The booster should be mounted with the inlet valve on the top facing the engine.

Dave
 
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The original manual master was a 4 bolt with the bottom 4 holes in the being used. The bottom most two bolts in the mounting plat were pressed from the master and bolted under the dash. The two above that are pressed from under the dash outward and nutted on the master. The pedal rod goes through the hole between those 4 holes. There is also another set of studs about 4.5" from the center set that are pressed from under the dash and have nuts under the hood.
Sounds like I need to try to track down a pedal rod from a power brake car.

Master Mounting.jpg
 
You may need to change the mounting plate also. Seem to remember that the power booster has 4 bolts with nuts under the dash. In any case you will need the correct pedal also.

Dave
 
All the MCs back then were 4-bolt, whether the 66-older single-pot or the 67-up doubles, I believe they stayed with 4-bolts until the late 70s or so when they switched to aluminum (and the boosters were then updated to match)

C-bodies use different pedal bracketry between MB and PB, with a different pedal ratio. You either need the conversion setup (shown below) or to get a PB pedal from under the dashboard of another car. The pedal rod for PB will be native to the booster.

In the white firewall pic above, we can clearly see 6 bolts - I just looked at 2 boosters and a mtg plate in my basement, and the upper bolts would locate above the MC studs in the picture. The boosters I checked were the 66-69 dbl-diaphragm disc booster and a 71-newer large-dia single diaphragm booster (both with the same pattern). So I believe that the mtg plate would need changed, and I'd bet that the extra holes would already be in teh firewall. (the factory likely wasn't stamping firewalls specific for brake options, they were already doing that based on AC!)

The picture below is an MBrake car wearing a PBrake conversion setup. I believe it is a factory field-retrofit setup that I have heard of, but cannot confirm because I've never seen one specifically documented as such. It could be aftermarket, but the bracketry looks old, and the booster looks like parts-store reman. A setup like this is seen on some 70s A-bodies with PBrake, maybe other Mopars of this era.

If doing this conversion, try to get this area sealed up with the foam-type seal the factory used, as this will help keep fumes from entering the car. Even if you don't have an exhaust leak, there is surely oil/grime near the hot exhaust. (the seal doesn't have to be perfect, just don't toss it out thinking it's not useful)

Also -
If converting a column-shift car, the 71-up single-diaphragm booster will block the shifter linkage from hitting 1st gear. It might have too much boost for drums anyway. If using the band-clamp style in the photo below, be aware that if you ever convert to discs you'll need to convert it to a disc-brake booster. A drumbrake booster is fine for normal driving, but in a heavy stop it does **NOT** have enough boost for the higher pressures that discs require. Engineers wouldn't have spec'd a different booster between drum and disc without a valid reason that would be able override the bean-counters - we should trust the engineers in this regard.

Now that I've said all that, here's an anecdote:
I converted my 65 Fury from manual drums to PDB back in 1992 or so, way before you could ask the internet how to do it. I used a 71 disc booster, and had to do a little hogging on the pedal bracket to get the booster snout to fit. (but when you're young, and there's 6 years difference between parts, it doesn't raise a red flag like it might for me now. But I got it in there. (didn't know about the pedal ratio thing, nor did any of the brake shops or Mopar experts I talked with in the months after.)

The problem was the brakes were spongy, and I couldn't get them bled out. The car stopped very well (on par with my sister's then-new Camaro) but the pedal was so soft, it surely had to have air in there. Bled a couple of gallons thru, doing drip bleed over a span of hours, everything you could think of. Spoke to many people about my brake conversion, and got lots of ideas to check out, but never found the solution. Learned about the pedal difference about 10-15 years later, and it made so much sense why the pedal was so soft.

Ironically, I did my 2nd conversion to Manual disc brakes, and I love that setup even better. Yes, the pedal is stiff, but no worse than Manual Drums, and the longer travel makes them linear feeling. And I can stand on them with both feet at 40mph and make your eyeballs stretch just a little.







1967 Chrysler 300 Series | eBay
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