How to Swap your Brake Master Cylinder and brake booster

[lkailburn]

This writeup, along with others is permanently hosted on my website: http://www.lukekailburn.com/boostermc.html How to Swap your Brake Master Cylinder and brake booster Swapping the Brake master cylinder: Open the resevoir cap and remove the fluid from the resevoir. a syringe works if you have one. Remove the two brake hardlines that run from the master cylinder to the prop valve. you can simply remove the mc side since i was upgrading to a new Master cylinder that requires new lines i fully removed the stock mc to prop valve lines. Disconnect the resevoir cap wires remove the two 12mm nuts securing the MC to the booster and remove comparing some master cylinders. at this point if you are ONLY replacing or upgrading the master cylinder, skip down past the booster swap steps. If you are also replacing or upgrading your booster, continue below. Swapping the Brake booster: Now we climb under the car and locate the 4 12mm nuts and the pin and cotter clip. remove all here's a view of the pin and the cotter clip All the hardware removed remove the brake booster vacuum line from the front of the booster Now remove the booster from the engine bay. you may find you have to unbolt the bracket that holds the throttle cable and clutch slave line. You can see it unbolted and moved aside. comparing some brake boosters. make sure you install the gasket on the back of the brake booster where it mounts to the firewall. Now if you are installing a much larger booster, like i am with the teg abs booster. you may find some difficulties squeezing it in. i actually had to take an angle grinder and cut a small tab off my y8 IM. the IM before the IM after You might also find it benicial to unbolt the bracket that holds the clutch slave softline the firewall. this gives you more play on the hardine. Finally, got the new huge booster fitted into the firewall. Now go back inside the car under the dash and reinstall the 12mm nuts(torque to spec) and the pin and cotter pin. Here's a picture lining up the booster arm with the brake pedal. Now reconnect the brake booster vacuum line. You can also reconnect the clutch slave cylinder line brackets if you unbolted them earlier. If you have to make new lines like i did read here. if not skip over the making new lines part Making new MC-prop hard brake lines Here's what you need. you need youre stock MC to prop valve lines. a brake line bender tool and some new brake hard lines. The brake hardlines come preflared with the fittings already on the line. All you have to do is measure the lengths of your old ones and get the closest line longer than that. Don't want to get one too short. Now on this particular MC (1" 94-97 integra abs) has two different sized ports. so i had to get a line that had both smaller sized port, cut off one end, put the new bigger fitting on and then reflare the end. temporarily mount the master cylinder to the booster so you can mock up your new lines. Now start bending your lines. i started with the easier shorter line. I removed the vac booster line for clarity. Both new lines made Installing the master cylinder. It is important to bench bleed the cylinder first. Install bleed lines (u can make your own) that feed right back into the resevoir. fill the resevoir with new dot3 brake fluid then manually press in the master cylinder piston, you'll watch air and some fluid push through the lines and into the resevoir. It is important to have the lines in the fluid so that as you release the piston back out it draws in brake fluid and not air. It takes roughly 10 pumps to bench bleed the MC. do it slowly and carefully and until you see no more bubble in the lines or resevoir. When installing the MC back onto the booster, make sure you have the seal shown here now install the MC to the booster(torque to spec) with the bleed lines STILL attached. this way you can disconnect them one at a time and quickyl install your brake hard lines, minimizing fluid loss. Torque the lines to 6.5ftlbs Now reconnect the wires on the resevoir cap, top off the fluid,rest the cap ontop and your ready to bleed the brakes. Both Haynes and Helms state the brake bleeding order for 96-00 civic as: 1. Right Rear 1. Left Front 1. Left Rear 1. Right Front congrats you have successfully replaced your brake master cylinder and booster. You can now enjoy pushing more fluid to those big brakes :-) -Luke

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[lkailburn]

bump cuz it showed up on page 2 :-P

-Luke

[randomtask77]

Would it not be a smart idea to install just the master cylinder and not the booster?

Also, do you already have a 40/40 proportioning vavle installed?

Nice job on the write up. This might convince me to finallly get mine installed.

[lkailburn]

if you are upgrading to anything 15/16 or less you could probably skip the booster upgrade, unless the new mc has a different mounting position. some of them bolt onto the boosters differently. the booster is designed to provide the proper amount of assistance when you apply the brakes. if you've ever disconnected the vac line off the booster and tried to apply the brakes you'll know what i'm talking about. so if you have the matching booster it's pretty easy to swap it in. my new booster was MASSIVE so it took a bit of finessing to get in there.

the 96-00 dx stock prop valve is 40/40


and yes do it! if you have upgraded your brakes you should, my setup feels amazing after upgrading to the correct sized mc and booster. pushes so much more fluid and gives me much better control over the brakes.

:-D


-Luke

[fathergoat]

Good job. That will be really helpful to anyone who needs to repair or upgrade.

[jdmforeel]

quick question i went to the junkyard today and pick up the integra brake booster and master cylinder so do i still have to bleed the master cylinder or no???

[lkailburn]

yes you should always bench bleed a master cylinder before installing it on the car.

-Luke