The MightyBoy - is it restoration or Hotrodding?

Soun ds like an air lock to me. The thought of isolating one side from the other by clamping off the flexible line should or hopefully tll yo which side has the air.
Adjusting the rear brakes if they are drums is an other good suggestion but this crutch rocket would benefit from discs all round.
I have seen power bleeding done simply by compressed air in through an old master cylinder cap but not sure what pressure. Another is the use of vacuum and draw it through the bleed nipple.

I had a poke around today and remain mystified.

The only non-standard (from a Nissan perspective) thing is the operation of the brake linkage to the power booster.

It's a cow of a thing to get to the back of the booster but I'll give it a go to see if there's a problem with the push rod adjustment.

First I may try moving the master cylinder forward off the booster and see if that alters anything. If it solves the problem it will tell me there's an issue with the length of the pushrod.

A strange thing happened with it when I went to top up the reservoir. With the pedal depressed the fluid was very slow to drain though the filter in the neck of the reservoir but once the pedal was released it flowed in heap faster. Never seen that before.

I'll purchase a power bleeder and give it a go and see how it works.

On a side note, when bleeding the brakes the amount of fluid coming out of each bleed nipple is about the same and the amount is what I would expect.

Finally found time to have a look into the problem.

I removed the master cylinder and did some measuring and when the brake pedal hits the floor the pushrod out of the booster has travelled 30mm.

I calculate each side of the master cylinder is about 60mm long.

So not enough travel on the pushrod.

There is some slack in the linkage I can take out to see if that solves the problem.

i don't think there was a bleeding problem as the pedal was very firm on the second quick pump.

Now I just need to find the time to delve into the back of the dashboard to get to the rear of the booster.

good luck with the pedal linkages. It was about a week of stuffing around to lower the pedal in my dodge so you didn't need to put your knee through the steering wheel to get your foot on the pedal and retain more progression than an on/off switch. Hopefully yours is easier

Well I finally got brave and worked on the little car.

From a lot of poking and prodding I hade come to the decision there was play in the pushrod to brake pedal lever which was consuming some of the travel.  I also decided that the angle of the lever (pointing down at 6.00 o'clock) meant the distance travelled was falling off as the pedal travelled further.

So the task was simple, disconnect the brake lever, remove the booster (the master was already off) and adjust the brake lever angle and length of the booster pushrod.

Simple until I started.  The get to the booster bolts you need to remove a chunk of the heating system.  To remove that you must remove the dash.  But to remove the dash you must remove the console, and of course to remove the console you have to remove the seats.  Oh I forgot to get the dash unbolted requires the removal of the windscreen.

Once all that was done the booster was unbolted.

To remove the booster you need to remove the battery, disconnect the intake system and sundry vacuum pipes and lastly the strut brace.

The play in the linkage was caused by Nissan using a different size clevis pin to Daewoo so I drilled the smaller fitting to be a tight fit on an HT bolt.  The bolt will be the only Imperial bolt on the thing.  I chose Imperial as it was a better fit in the hole than a Metric bolt.  I drilled the bolt and used a split pin as the factory did.

Ten minutes work on the booster and brake lever and it was time to go back together.

This time I'm not assembling the interior until I know the brakes work.  They are all reconnected but un-bled, as I had had enough of it for the day.  The pedal with un-bled brakes is better than the old bled brakes pedal so it looks like a win may be at hand. 

Hopefully I'll get the courage to blead the brakes tomorrow and see how they are.

That wore me out just reading let alone doing the job :lol: :lol:

Sounds like you are well on the way to getting it sorted


Paul

Zuffen That amount of work to enable you to bleed the brakes is unbelievable. It is amazing that you can do kit all without giving up in disgust. I thought I had trouble getting a good pedal on my Morris 1800 Ute but that only required about four attempts at trying different things including swapping the front calipers to the opposite sides of the vehicle. None of the experts I asked knew what to do while I was having trouble but of course as soon as I had fixed it, they all knew what I had done wrong.

You have done very well. I trust it all works now!

I've decided whilst I have it apart I'll put a new master cylinder on it as it will be easier only bleeding it once.

I'm not in a rush as I have more than enough work to do around the place as the last owners of the property thought nothing of dumping crap everywhere and it's my job to collect and dispose of it all.

Progress is being made, albeit very slowly.

I'm currently waiting on a rebuild kit for the rear callipers to come from Japan. I've rebuilt the front callipers and put new rotors on as well.

As my shed now has a 2 post hoist it makes it much easier to work on the car.

One day I noticed a red spot on the floor under the car. Turns out it was coolant. Hmm where would that be coming from? The weep hole in the waterpump of course!

Replacing a Pulsar waterpump is a doddle in a Nissan, but you need to be a proctologist to do it in a MightyBoy. There is a 5mm gap between the waterpump pulley and the chassis rail.

This should be easy to do. All I had to do was remove all the front tinware off the car then all bar one engine mount then lift the car on the hoist so the engine was lower on the waterpump end so I could access the retaining bolts. Once that was done I had to manoeuvre the pump out of the engine bay and put a new gasket in place and then put the new pump where it belonged without damaging the gasket.

Then put it all back together. One and a half days later the engine bay was back together. Still need to reinstate the tinware.

Funny I didn't curse or swear as it was my own doing trying to squeeze the engine into the little car.

Next adventure is making the fuel tank bigger. The tank is a 30 litre alloy fuel cell and if I cut one end off it I can extend it so it would be around 50 litres.

I'll do this by sawing the end off with a powersaw and a fine toothed wood blade. Then I'll prep some infill panels and drop it all off to a local welder and he can TIG it back together. He was quite negative about it blowing up when being welded. I don't think he realised he would be getting want is basically an open box to weld back together.

Meantime I have a zillion other tasks to do so this may take a week or so for me to get onto it.

Hi Zuffen, welcome back to the project. As the terrorist said, Weava Bin Waitin for an update. I was beginning to think it had been kicked to the back of the shed to die under dust.