Getting the MC out is easy. The booster is a bit of a faff. Working under the dashboard to remove these four nuts and the R-clip holding the pushrod to the pedal is not fun. Patience and good flexibility are important here.
When you’re switching things over, don’t lose this spacer that goes between the master cylinder and booster or things won’t fit properly!
It takes a bit of wriggling to get the booster out of the engine bay, but it’s certainly not the worst job we’ve ever had to perform on this truck. Be sure to bench bleed the master cylinder before you install it: otherwise it is possible to get air trapped in the MC that refuses to bleed out of the lines. Once we bench bled the new master cylinder, we popped it into place.
Now we move under the truck and do the brake lines. We started at the back and worked our way forwards. Here you can see the original 16 year old rubber line going from the live rear axle to the caliper. It’s still serviceable, but the new I4X lines will be a big improvement. Out it comes!
4 comments
Maybe I skimmed it too quickly, but were the calipers in good working shape? No chance of sticky/stuck calipers?
I do find that most Japanese manufacturers (imo) undersizes brakes on their regular cars. On my old Highlander, a very quick stop from 160km/h to 0km/h would seriously put the brakes to test(did that once). I didn’t encounter adequately sized brakes until I got my Mazdaspeed3, and even then they somehow were just huge single piston sliding behemoths.
PS: With the new website format, are all the old accounts and such gone? We use this name and email format to comment now?
Calipers were fine. We cleaned the sliding pins and re-greased them when we replaced the pads, but that’s all they needed.
if the VX’s brakes were more consistent they’d be a lot better. Even with the repairs, the pedal can be a bit vague. Feels like there isn’t enough vacuum on the booster or something along those lines. Still a great rig though and the upgrades we added made a noticeable difference.
nice