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Europa: The Brake Master Cylinder

My gut feeling panned out when I decided that as much as I wanted never to see or work on a Europa Master Cylinder, I needed to know that it was properly installed. Other work on the car was substandard or incorrect, so it seemed prudent.

Sure enough, there was a major part missing. the part would have been installed inside the T-section of the chassis, out of sight. Baring failure or inspection, no one would ever know it wasn’t there.

So I bought an inspection camera and had a look. Sure enough, that backing plate was not present. The PO had installed the MC without it.

Since the MC appears to have also failed, I decided to install a new one. The original model of MC has long been unavailable. I had a stepped bore Girling replacement on hand, new. It’s a dual circuit unit. The original was a single circuit type with a remote reservoir but someone had taken it out and put in a dual circuit replacement with the reservoir mounted atop. So a PO installed a billet aluminum thing that extended the MC out into the boot for access to the reservoir. This placed it in the space the spare tire would occupy. So someone built a wooden mount to hold the jack and keep the spare off the MC.

My PO informed me that the front boot lid had to be removed to get at the spare. It proved to be untrue, but getting at the spare was more difficult than it needed to be.

Federal S2 cars had dual circuit MC’s that extended into the boot area. Presumably to get them out of the way of the spare tire, they were installed using an articulated linkage that allowed them to be at an angle out of the way.

I have three of those. One will go on the Type 54, which happily was found to be drilled for the mount from the factory. I have only to assemble it on the car.

Not yet though! Turns out the car has been replumbed with 1/4″ stainless steel lines and AN fittings. I’d never seen an AN brake line fitting before and found it to be strange. Standard fittings are needed to connect to the new MC. So I’ve had two hard lines fabricated with one end having an -04 AN nut. That will mate to the existing brake pipe via a 4 AN to 3 AN adaptor. I just need to do the proper flare for the other end then bend it to fit.

Once those parts are all working together, I can finish putting the brake pipes in and install the MC and get the brakes bled. Then I’ll update this post.

One beef I have with previous work done on the car is that there one or more stewards of the vehicle seemed bent on only doing good work where it could be readily observed. If it was in a hidden location they did nothing more than the minimum to get it to at least appear sound, less if possible.

Bulkhead brake linkage backing plate. I ended up starting it with bolts in the right side holes.

 

The 4 AN fittings used plain steel collars.

This billet of aluminum, used only to extend the Master Cylinder into the boot area or past the steering rack was installed without the backing plate. Just two bolts into the bulkhead.

shop manual illustration of the original MC showing the correct mounting with the back plate. It fed all four corners of the car.

One of these is new and came with a brake pipe I bought at Napa. It will mate to the new MC. The other came from 952R, my Federal S2 Europa. It is a sloppy fit. So I’ll get another like the little short one.

Here is the mount location for the MC. I’ve bolted it down with RTV between it and the bulk head. That way, when I remove the two bolts on the left, it won’t fall in and it will stay in place for the linkage box installation.

 

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Fenimore Central

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