LT1 brake booster and master cylinder on 68 Firebird?

[Shawn MacAnanny]

I have 4 drums all the way around, just rebuilt them and they work alright but my master cylinder is no good. It's all manual brake system so i wanted to installed something to help it out a little bit. I have a 94 Z28 parts car in my yard i had been using for parts for this swap and it has a complete braking system. I was going to take out the master cylinder and use it along with the booster. Would that work?

[Donovan]

no, not with drum brakes

a rebuilt master is not expensive. $15 or so? You could get a used stock booster for that car pretty cheap too. Probably $20 or so.

Much easier than cobbling stuff together and sure to work as intended. The LT1 stuff is too much trouble. You would need to modify the booster bracket, firewall or both and the master cylinder has the ports on the wrong side so you'd have to greatly modify the lines then re-flare them because the master is metric bubble flare!

I would not use the LT1 master or booster unless you were also going to put the disc brakes on your car from the LT1 car. This would be a waste though since they aren't very good brakes. You'd be better off using LS1 brakes.

[Apogee]

Is it possible...yes. Is it worth it...that's arguable. Your time and money would be much better spent in my opinion finding some discs for the front considering everything you've got under the hood on that thing. Your cars ability to generate kinetic energy far exceeds it's ability to reduce it.

The bore size of the LT1 MC is the same as the LS1 unit at 1" with passenger side, ISO bubble flare ports like Donovan pointed out. The booster is a dual 9" diaphragm unit...it's not bad stuff really and possibly wouldn't be such a bad choice for a disc/disc setup IMHO.

Tobin
KORE3

[Shawn MacAnanny]

I will be going with disc/disc shortly but was looking for a quick fix before i take it through inspection. Brakes are the next mod but i was hoping to get it through inspection first. If MCs are that cheap ill just buy a new one and installed it to go through inspection. When i do the disks i plan on lowing the car, installing c-clip eliminaters, lower control arms and such. I like to do everything i want in there area i want while i have it apart ya know?

[Apogee]

Reman MC's aren't too bad and they'd at least make your drums work up to their potential as is.

Since you brought it up though, I'd suggest that you try to decide what you're planning to do for brakes before you opt for c-clip eliminators as they may severly limit your options. There are cleaner solutions if you want to have positively retained axles, not the least of which includes welding new ends on your existing housing.

Tobin
KORE3