Little Joe said:is there anyway to make more breaking power in the front?
Starting a new thread, but in response to the above question from another thread.
There's a great upgrade that most Cruiser heads are not doing yet. I've done it on TippyR, and N. Penner did it on Tigger (both trucks with 44"+ tires), and both trucks can lock up the wheels on a whim... Hydro-boost.
Instead of using vaccuum to boost the brake power, hydraulic fluid from the power steering is used.
This system is decades old, designed by an old stock car racer. You can find hydro-boosters in the wrecking yard for CHEAP. They are on some cadillacs, any chev truck that had a diesel, and even some astro-vans. The 98+ ford pickups with the diesels have them too, now. The one I am using came out of an International School bus.
The mounting is easy. It took me under 2 hours on a Saturday afternoon to get mine mounted into Tippy. The stock brake pedal and linkage all seemed to work perfectly. All I had to do was build a small adapter plate for the firewall to get all the bolt holes matched up.
Then, you take the pressure line from the power steering, and screw it into the brake master. Then the line goes from the brake master to the steering box (brakes get priority pressure over steering), and a return line from the brake master has to go to the power steering resevoir. You also need to put new ends on your brake lines, as you'll likely need to use the new master cylendar too, which is going to be at least as large or larger than the stock Toyota master.
Stopping power is staggering. You can fiddle with disk conversions, bigger callipers, etc... I've done them all. The improvement with the hydro boost is a quantum leap over all other brake mods. Plus, it's one less thing that you need that expensive alternator mounted vacuum pump for. (assuming you have one of those extravegantly priced pieces)
Caution, when the engine stops, however, you don't get a pump or two of the pedal before you run out of vaccuum, when the engine stops, you got no power assist. Like other brakes, however, you can still stop by pressing real hard.
Peter Straub