Booster: Dis-ass-sem-bole

Having made a choice among the three boosters, I bought two of the 54-73512. I know how I work so one is to be a sacrifice in the name of learning and the other is the working model.

I’d heard people describe how to take apart a Bendix style brake booster. I think that’s what I have, and I’d always wanted to work on one just to see how it’s done but now that I was actually going to work on one, I turned to Youtube to see if there were any videos that could help me.

I found two videos that I was able to learn from. One is titled: “60's-70's Midland / Bendix Brake Booster Knowledge With Booster Steve” and the other is “Brake Booster Rebuild”.

The rebuild video isn’t complete. The host takes the booster apart but hasn’t made any other follow ups. That’s ok though, The booster the host is working on isn’t the same as mine so not all of it is relevant to me but there’s enough to help.

The old boosters like the Mustang’s is a two piece shell with each half being “keyed” so the halves go together only one way with the two shells being twisted in opposite directions to lock them into a solid shell.

Apparently in the remanufacturing world, there isn’t time to untwist and twist the shell for disassembly and reassembly. It’s easier for them to cut through the hoop tabs that help lock the halves together and bend them out of the way and then bend them back when done.

Me being me, this was not acceptable.

Watching the “Mr. Booster” video, I saw a huge spanner wrench they had made to twist the shell halves. I made my own.

I have this big ass metal cart that one of my friends dragged into the shop. I drilled two holes into the surface that would accept the mounting studs for the master cylinder on the front cover. These holes in the cart were enough to hold the booster while the spanner was placed over the booster mounting holes so the booster can be twisted until the keyed sections lined up and the two halves can be separated.

Before the spanner could be utilized though, I wanted to restore the locking hoops to their proper shape and location so the spanner could be put to use.

Channel Lock pliers were the most effective. I was going to weld the cut hoops back together again but once bent into place, it struck me as not necessary, so I didn’t.

Two parts of the booster have to be modified; The studs on the back of the booster have to be rearranged to work with the Boss firewall adapter mount and the pushrod at the rear of the booster has to be shortened and slightly reshaped to work with the Mustang.

I don’t multi-task so I’ll start on the case and go from there.