68 LeSabre 4 door

Hello all,

After completely redoing the power brake system, the brake pedal seems to have a lot of play before the brakes start working. The pedal actually seems to go down 3/4 of the way or more without any affect on braking. The brakes work great other than this. I had my local mechanic check the brakes and he could not find anything wrong. Any suggestions??

I am prepping the body for new paint and want to remove the body side molding that runs almost the length of the car. This is the molding that is about 3/4 inch wide and is about 1/2 was down each side. Is this held on with clips or just adhesive? What is the best way to remove? Does anyone make this molding as it is not in the best shape?

Thanks!

Tony

The drum brakes may need to be adjusted to take up the slack. Not the parking brake, the brake shoes. Please advise of you have done this.

Also that strip is held on in multiple ways. Most of the way it is just on plastic clips that will release if you put a flat edge under the strip and gently lift. But watch out at the ends of the doors. Sometimes there are screws there that go to clips within the track of the strip. Same for the front fender although usually by 68 if it looked like there was no external access to that area it's just the plastic clips. The clips themselves will slide onto tabs welded to the body.

I doubt those mouldings are available except for a lucky find.

Thanks for the quick reply!

We adjusted the brakes as well as the mechanic we brought it to for a thorough going through. My dad had a '62 Skylark and said the brake always had a spongy feeling. Is this common on the 60s Buicks?

As for the moldings, from pictures that I have seen, it looks like either some models didn't have the molding or removed it. I guess my choice is to paint it or go ahead and get rid of it. I assume there were be a good number of spots to be welded and smoothed if I go with removing it.

Thanks again!

No, it is not common for spongy brakes for any car. Can you slip your sneaker toe under the brake pedal when it is pushed down?

Thanks for working through this with me John. Your help is much appreciated!

Nope. The pedal is almost to the floor.

I am glad to offer my opinion, and I am sure you are very competent at mechanics. But may I ask a few more questions to get a base line of what you have already done?

May I assume your car has drum brakes at all 4 wheels?

And going back to the adjustment, do the brakes just scrape the drum on all 4 wheels?

Does the parking brake hold and release?

Did you put on a new Master cylinder?

Was it like this before you started working on the system?

Did you replace or disassemble any part of the power booster?

Have you looked at each brake line clamp to be sure the lines are not leaking at those points?

Did you replace any, or all of the wheel cylinders?

For any you did not replace, were you able to get the bleeder valves open?

Again I don't ask to cause you any distress but it's easier to help if we know some of the answers to these questions.

May I assume your car has drum brakes at all 4 wheels? yes. new drums from CARS

And going back to the adjustment, do the brakes just scrape the drum on all 4 wheels? yes wheels spin with friction

Does the parking brake hold and release? yes

Did you put on a new Master cylinder? yes.

Was it like this before you started working on the system? yes but brakes were totally shot; left front was non-functional; right front not pad left

Did you replace or disassemble any part of the power booster? no, power brake booster was only thing not replaced.

Have you looked at each brake line clamp to be sure the lines are not leaking at those points? yes and mechanic also went over

Did you replace any, or all of the wheel cylinders? yes all four

For any you did not replace, were you able to get the bleeder valves open? n/a

please feel free to ask as many questions as possible. As I said, the brakes work good, but the peddle play is a little scarey.

Thanks again!

When you bled the system, at the end was the pedal height good and then it sunk when the car was running? And you didn't by any chance wind up with a disc brake MC as opposed to the drum brake MC, did you?

The pedal height is good and feels the same when being depressed. The master cylinder in for drum brakes. They do offer 2 different master cylinders. One for Delco power unit and one for a Bendix power unit. From what I read, I needed the one that goes with the Bendix based on the color of the unit being black and not the gold-anodized.

Could it have anything to do with the type of brake fluid?

I was just reading my 1969 manual and learned something I did not know. Maybe this is the problem. On page 50-27, which is in the manual brakes portion of the book, section 50-11 talks about the MC differences. Cars could be equipped with either a Delco or a Bendix . The Bendix is easily identified by the presence of a stop screw on the under side of the unit, just between the two reservoirs. And the difference between Disc and Drum brake is the presence of a check valve in the front line for a drum brake car.

But the important part of this section says that there are 5 different master cylinder displacement rates.

There should be a code stamped into the MC on the end. For a 69 LeSabre series with power drum brakes the code should be HU . If there is a YM there, then that would be the Disc Brake MC.

Other than that can you verify if you had two different wheel cylinder units, One for the front and a different unit for the rear?

I will check out and try to verify the master cylinder this weekend.

The front and rear do have different wheel cylinders

If it may be a master cylinder/booster mismatch, maybe I will pick up a rebuilt unit and try replacing them both.

Thanks again! I will post as soon as I check the master