Brake booster question


92ranger18

92ranger18

10+ Year Member

Joined
Oct 15, 2010
Messages
203
Points
1,601
City
Jemison, Alabama
Vehicle Year
1992
Transmission
Automatic
I plan on taking my ranger off the street on putting it on the strip. My qeustion is do i need the brake booster? I know if i remover it i wont have power brakes. Can i just take it off and mount the master cylinder to the firewall or will i have to buy a (for example) wilwood brake and mater cylinder and mount on the floor or firewall? I want to do this to make room for a 351w so i will have room for installation of motor and fenderwell headers and adding a ujoint in the steering shaft iff needed for the headrers. Just a question. If anyone has any advice for a different aproach please feel free to say so. Thanks
 
You won't want to use the same master cylinder, it was made for power assist so would be very hard to brake without it.
Simply remove the vacuum line and plug it, start engine then try braking, that's what it would be like, the boost doesn't hinder the brake pedal it only adds power.

You can get master cylinders out of an older Ford truck(F-150?), at wrecking yards, that didn't have power brakes.
I think '83-'88 rangers could have factory manual brakes.
Or hit a parts store and see if they have a master cylinder for an older ford without power brakes.
I would take the power booster out and with you to find one that will just bolt in.
The brake pedal rod should be fine to reuse, the ratio as well, and of course the brake lines.
 
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Rockauto.com has manual master cylinders for under $30
 
the diesel rangers had manual brakes (so order one for that), the 2 upper (of the 4) bolts on the firewall line up with the master putting it in alignment with the pedal. when you buy them new they even come with the rod that hooks onto the pedal and pushes into the master

I tried mine without the booster, and with the standard master, and bought the manual cylinder for $19.00. I didn't notice a difference between the two, they were both pretty firm to press. and both had a 7/8" bore on the piston. in fact I couldn't tell the two apart aside from the manual master came with the rod
 
That is odd, I would expect the non-powered master to have a smaller diameter but longer stroke.
Maybe the brake pedal leverage(ratio) design was the difference.

I know when I converted older cars to powered brakes the original master was way to touchy for the added assist, through you thru the windshield touchy, had to go to a larger diameter master.
 
I expected them to be different too, but I couldn't tell them apart, if there was a difference

RonD said:
Maybe the brake pedal leverage(ratio) design was the difference.
Click to expand...

this would also make sense, like maybe the rod was meant to attach further-from-the-pivot on the pedal. because the rod wasn't 100% straight when I mounted it either.

I mostly did it to see what difference I would notice, because I run a wicked-huge cam with long duration so it doesn't draw any vacuum at idle, so the booster doesn't work great. so I tried to do away with the booster entirely. I went back to having the booster though.
 
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