Hi everyone, I'm a new poster. I'm a Mopar fan from way back, my dad used to work for Chrysler in the 60's and 70's. Right now I've got three projects:

64 Belvedere 383 4 speed
65 Coronet 318 poly
68 Coronet R/T 440/727

The 65 Coronet is actually my son's car. We've done a complete Firm Feel suspension upgrade and the Disc-O-Tech disc brake swap. We're done except for bleeding the brakes, setting the ride height and aligning the front end. We ran into trouble when we tried to bleed the brakes.

First, we were trying to bench bleed the M/C. We were doing it on the car by running lines from the connections to the reservoirs. As my son is pumping the pedal, I see no bubbles (or movement of any kind) in the fluid. Doesn't appear that the plunger in the M/C is doing anything. I removed the M/C from the booster and found there was no rod between them for the booster to activate the M/C. I bought the booster and M/C as a remanufactured unit so I never saw them apart.

I'm having a little trouble with the guy I bought them from, so I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get one. I fabbed one up from some steel rod, and it seems to work fine for bleeding, but I was told this is dangerous and I need the correct part. It's a Midland booster but I'm not sure what year. Are they all the same for the Midlands? There's a pic below if it helps.

My other big problem is that the brake lines are leaking at the combo block. I was told that it's a 67 disc/drum block (another pic below). The lines are from Inline Tube and seem like quality stuff, but every one of them is leaking to some degree. The one that's leaking the least is actually one of the M/C lines that I didn't buy pre-made. I made it up myself after hosing up the Inline one. Is it possible that the ports on this used block are no good? Or am I just doing something stupid? I've done a fair amount of brake work, but never had to replace lines and connectors.

Thanks for any help you can give me, it's frustrating to get this far and get derailed on the last few steps. Here are some pics:

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the booster should be fairly common.
booster dewy I think is the person to look up.

the distribution block you would just have to check the seating surface for any flaws, or cracks. same for the lines.

where in north texas? allen, plano area?

Thanks Andrew, I'll check with Dewey.

I live on the north end of Lake Lewisville, just west of Little Elm.

Andrewh and I are both in DFW. He may be a little closer to you.

Check with Booster Dewey to see if he has the missing linkage. If not, I may be ably to make one for you but I'd need to know the dimensions.

As for the leaking lines, did you put a double flare on the one you made or a typical plumbing type single flare?

I don't want to get off topic, but what sway bar are you running with those front mount calipers?

Cool car.

Thanks feets, I will check with Dewey tomorrow. Tried to do it today but was too buried. I do have the double flare. I bought one of those Eastwood flaring tools. Expensive, but I've got other cars to restore and figured I'd get good use out of it. Plus, I originally bought one of those cheapo tools and it broke on the second use. The Eastwood tool works great.

I just pulled the block off and looked at the ports. They don't look too bad, but they are not perfect. I ordered a new one from Inline Tubes that I think is a better configuration for what I need anyway.

nd65, that's a Firm Feel 1 1/4" bar in front and a 3/4" in the rear.

Do you think it's too much? What will that do? I'm not really that knowledgeable on suspensions.

Front sway bar at 1.25" diameter? I believe that FF bar is hollow (=light weight) which is a good thing (always try to remove weight from the front of nose-heavy cars). On my Challenger, I have a solid front sway bar 1.25" diameter, as well as a solid 1.0" rear sway bar (both custom-made many years ago). Depending how the car is set-up (torsion bar rate, leaf spring rate, overall car weight and front/rear weight balance), as well as how and where the car is driven, a 1.25 front bar is OK... I'm even considering a hollow front 1.375" diameter front bar... continued eventual competition is the intended goal. Remember, its an overall "package setup" that makes the differences in how well the car will handle, then there's the nut-behind-the-wheel-factor.

The front bar is hollow. It has new 1.00 torsion bars, HD strut rods, reinforced LCAs, tubular UCAs, fast ratio pitman, and HD Street/Track leaf springs. All from Firm Feel except the LCAs. It also has new ball joints, control arm bushings, rear spring bushings, etc. Pretty much an all new suspension and disk brake setup.

I was depending on Firm Feel to make sure I was getting the right stuff.

The nut behind the wheel will be my 20 yr old son.

DwinTx,

Are your new Inline Tube lines regular steel or are they stainless steel? I had a friend who bought stainless lines for his car and he had to really put some muscle into tightening his brake lines in order to get them to stop seeping/leaking at the fittings.

I suppose stainless steel is a harder material and therefore it took more effort to get the flares to crush down and seal properly.

Lawrence

Mustard, they are the regular steel lines. I did read that those stainless lines were harder to work with and I knew I was going to have to do a little bending to make them fit. I didn't want to make it any harder than I had to.