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IIa SWB no brakes


L19MUD

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Yesterday my 1965 IIa decided to try and kill me. It has not been out of the shed since just before xmas and was fine when I put it there. Started up easily and drove down the drive to the yard got to the road and the brake pedal went straight to the floor!

 

Master cylinder probably the first place to look?

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On 4/19/2022 at 11:36 AM, Bowie69 said:

For presence of fluid, yes!

Fair point! Didn't check anything at the time as I was expectng to go out for the day in it. Not have to jump in another vehicle

 

Loads of fluid in there though but nothing at the pedal at all. Will try and bleed a single wheel but suspect the master has failed internally?

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18 minutes ago, Snagger said:

Sounds like it.  If it was a leak, to have no pedal resistance it’d be a big leak and would give plenty of evidence.

My thoughts too as the master would be pushing the fluid towards the leak at a slave and drain the reservoir

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Well everyday is a school day!

My Series 2 has the metal cylinder reservoir which I had noticed yesterday supplies the clutch and the brakes. At the time I thought that was odd as you then have a single point of failure affecting both systems on closer inspection there is an inner and outer chamber that separates the two so there is not a single failure for both systems

When I put my finger in there to see how much fluid was present I had done so in the centre which is for the clutch. The other brake part was empty. I filled this and pumped the pedal to get some decent resistance and then drove carefully up and down the yard. It was then immediately apparent that the back left wheel cylinder had failed as it pulled to the right and there is evidence of fluid on that back drum plate. Pulling the drum off confirmed

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Ah!  I hadn’t realised we were discussing a system with the common reservoir.  I didn’t know they had concentric chambers or stand pipes, though a shared reservoir without a stand pipe for the clutch master would be very unwise and so, only with hindsight, this seems obvious.  
 

Glad you found the issue.  I’m still surprised you didn’t see the old leak, though.  Old or new, I thought that large a leak would present itself quite clearly.

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49 minutes ago, Snagger said:

Ah!  I hadn’t realised we were discussing a system with the common reservoir.  I didn’t know they had concentric chambers or stand pipes, though a shared reservoir without a stand pipe for the clutch master would be very unwise and so, only with hindsight, this seems obvious.  
 

Glad you found the issue.  I’m still surprised you didn’t see the old leak, though.  Old or new, I thought that large a leak would present itself quite clearly.

I suspect that it may have been slowly leaking for some time and the fluid coating the drum was getting burnt off. If the reservoir was close to empty the last time I drove it then there would not have been much left to leak out. Previous fluid checks have been ineffective due to the above! Certainly something I will be checking much more closely in the future now I know about the 2 parts of the reservoir 

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