peterc005

Has anyone tried installing a Commodore Brake Master Cylinder in a third-gen car?

My car is Right Hand Drive and the factory master cylinder hard lines exit very close to the front right strut tower, meaning the brake lines have a sharp bend in them.

I'm hoping Commodore master cylinders will have hard lines that exit on the other side and easier to get parts for.

TreeFiddy

Hey Peter, I never usually trawl this board and missed this post.

While I have no idea about your question, I am just curious about your conversion. I take it you have a full mirror, with the master cyl swapped left-right. So the swapper retained the factory mc?

Assume you've looked around in the wreckers; I did a bit of research a while back. All the Commie ones I looked at exitted on the left as you require, and they all had integral prop valves rather than the thirdgen divorced ones.

Like this, on some old VK or something:

peterc005

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it's a mirror conversion. Bit of a pain how the master cylinder hard hoses exit near the suspension tower and need a sharp turn.

I thought someone else might have done the Commodore master cylinder conversion, but could find no information.

In the end I bought a brand new complete OEM master cylinder off eBay for $70 + $20 freight.

It gets tricky because there are few different models, but in the end it all hooked up fine.

There was a whole heap of black gunk in the old brake reservoir and I assume this was the rotted seals of the old master cylinder. Was cheaper to get a brand new master cylinder than put new seals in the old one.

Any joy with the headers?

TreeFiddy

Not yet unfortunately, they're still in the box sitting in my garage.

This year went boom shortly after I bought the headers - both parents, best friend and myself all in hospital, in close sequence, for various operations, mostly right out of the blue. All right in the middle of my bathroom renovation (4 bare walls, loo and temp shower atm) which I'm just starting to finish, now I'm recovered from op.

Been zero time or health for car fiddling for ages ; at least it's given me a break and run faultlessly this year for a change .

That's pretty cheap for the replacement mc, doubt you'd get a new Holden one for anything near that anyway. My car has the partial mirror conv, where the factory mc remains in position and just the pedals cross over. If my mc ever goes south I'm stuck with that style too.

Vini

Hey Peter, i have the same setup with brake lines coming out of my mc but doesnt create any issues.
Are you having a problem or just trying to neaten it up?
Vince

peterc005

@Vince, I was just trying to tidy it up. Looks like a hack the way the hard lines point at the shock tower and bend away at a sharp angle.

In the end I bought a new complete master cylinder from Amazon for $70 plus $20 freight.

My car is an IROC and has the larger brake master piston bores, which makes it harder to find a good swap.

It looks messier, but thinking about it, having the external proportioning valve is probably a better approach than the Commodore integrated one because I can swap in an adjustable valve.

Just installed a new set of LS1 rotors and calipers, so unsure about how I will need to adjust the brake biases.