Navajo Brake Booster

As we bolt accessories onto our vehicle it starts gaining weight until what little braking we had becomes scary.  Changing to disc brakes helps stop the vehicle after a water crossing but does very little to bring the vehicle to a full stop on the street (In fact, I run disc brakes on the front only).  A few CJs came with factory brake boosters but even those become marginal after mounting a set of big tires.

There are several styles of the Off Again Automotive's new brake booster. Because of the limited space in my 1956 CJ engine compartment I selected the smallest diameter booster which measured about 8" across and 4.25" deep.   After the installation,  I couldn't believe the difference--my Jeep really stops!

The Installation

On my "custom everything" Jeep, the first thing I needed to do was to move the main wiring terminal. Well, it broke in half when I pulled it off the firewall.  I installed two wiring terminals and divided the loom in half for a cleaner installation. That worked. Next I removed the brake master cylinder and abandoned clutch cylinder from the firewall. With everything out of the way I could size things up.  Let's see--a plate to cover up the old clutch master cylinder hole and increasing the hole size for the brake booster was all that was needed.    The plate was easy but have you ever tried to use a hole saw to make a 1 3/4" hole into a 21/8" ? 

Next I test-fit the booster into the hole with a rebuilt master cylinder from Pep Boys--looked pretty good with one exception.  Because I didn't want to use the a stock Jeep spacer, the booster was running into the Chevy steering column before it pulled tight against the firewall.  So I made a plate that spaced the booster out about 1/4" and everything fit.  The new booster and master cylinder cleared the hood and the feed lines were an exact match to the master cylinder.  Only one small problem left: after bleeding the brakes I discovered that the rebuilt master cylinder from Pep Boys was leaking.  Once I replaced the leaking master cylinder, everything worked great.