Brake Travel, Master Cylinders, And Servo Pushrod

[GLPoomobile 958]

Last year I swapped my 1.6 brakes to a 306 266mm setup, and at the same time I replaced the MC. The MC was from GSF, so it's the Bendix 20.6mm.

 

After a huge amount of bleeding, I got the brakes about as free of air as I think is possible, but I found the brake travel had increased quite a lot.

 

Now having read in to this at the time, I knew that it was possible to adjust the servo pushrod to compensate for brake travel. But the general consensus seemed to be that I shouldn't need to adjust it in my case. So I just left it and got used to the travel.

 

Then I took the car down to Dan Taylor, and he mentioned the brake travel straight away. His opinion is that all MCs vary in size very slightly, and so adjustment of the pushrod is often necessary (sorry if I'm misquoting you on this Dan) when replacing the MC. And that got me thinking.....

 

I remembered that the 2 MCs looked different, so I've dug out this photo

 

Now look at the line going from center of the mounting surface to the end that meets the pushrod. To me it looks like the total distance is shorter on the new MC, so I do need to adjust my pushrod to take up the slack (so to speak). Would anyone agree?

[Rippthrough 98]

The pushrod is there so you can take up slack from differing M/C lengths - they're all different to some extent, I check it every time I change MC's.

[Veero 1]

When I went over to 307 HDI brakes I used a 22mm MC, pedal travel is perfect, whereas with the standard 205 item the power was there, just it had a mile of travel and went a bit squidgy at the end of the stroke. I didn't feel I needed to adjust the pushrod on the servo when I changed over, must have been set right somehow. A couple of other people who have driven my car have commented how balanced the brakes feel.