Hydraulic Handbrake Fitting

[Rally Slag 0]

hey guys, fitting a hydraulic handbrake to my car, just after some advise on plumbing it in. My car has 2 brake lines running from the master cylinder to the rear brakes as standard (car is a citroen ax track car by the way) i also want to fit a bias valve to the rear brakes as im running rear discs.

 

My guess is that i go from the master cylinder, join the 2 pipes into a T piece, then the new single brake line into the bias valve, out the bias valve, into the handbrake, out the handbrake, into another T piece and then one pipe from each side of that into the rear calipers? Am i correct or is this way wrong?

 

Cheers guys

[daveo 0]

i know a few guys on 205 rally cars who just use the one brake line to the back and T that one. they just blank the other one off

[Rally Slag 0]

I was also thinking of that, just wasnt sure it would work ok or not. I also wana make sure i've got the rest right about the bias valve etc

[welshpug 1,655]

As Dave said, you only need to use the one port to feed the rear brakes, in and out of the bias valve, then handbrake, then one t-piece at the back, then rear flexis-rear brakes.

[Rally Slag 0]

As Dave said, you only need to use the one port to feed the rear brakes, in and out of the bias valve, then handbrake, then one t-piece at the back, then rear flexis-rear brakes.

 

lovely, thanks for that, simple then

[Rob Thomson 6]

The really important thing is that you don't run the rear brakes off the same half of the master cylinder as one of the fronts. The system is split, diagonally on a 1.9 GTi. If you T the rear brakes together you'll join both circuits together, meaning that if one fails they both fail. Not clever.

 

Similarly, if you just blank off one of the existing rear pipes at the MC you could end up with just one front brake if something fails, and that's not clever either.

 

What you need to do is connect the fronts to one half of the master cylinder, connect the rears to one of the ports on the other half, and blank off the remaining port. Otherwise it's as Welshpug said.

[Rally Slag 0]

also something else to concider. good thinking

[philfingers 5]

one other thing is it's the rearward half of the m/c that fails first, usually due to water sitting in the low point and corroding the bore. So use the rear ward section for the back and front half for the front. When it corrodes sometiems the pedal goes to the floor other times it's fine. You're best loosing the rear brakes than the front!

Also 1600 gti uses a blanking plug in the m/c for the one port. You can use this on a 1900 to block the spares line off. Also the hyd h/b cylinder is usually :- feed into the rear port and then out of the front port to the rear brakes. . .. . .

[Rally Slag 0]

Thanks for that, another helpfull reply. I'll look into this when I fit it, i've orderd the parts, they should be here before the new year and i'll get it fitted asap and make sure it all works correcty.