Sammy's CF Bedford Van

[Sammy]

so things have been slow on the progress front somewhat .... but certainly making progress non the less

I've ordered a dominator 2000-2200rpm converter, so hoping that will turn up soon enough!

today I finalised the commodore wiper motor conversion, and extended the commodore loom wiring to up under the dash.

I've also decided instead of trying to get a different master cylinder on the Bedford booster I have started to fit the Commodore booster/master, so far some small filing of the bolt holes and its mounted to the firewall, I just need to shorten the shaft and then its pretty much done, fairly straight forward to do in the end

im also working on the engine cover, its slow going, lots of head scratching and pondering to make sure its right the first time, I want to have it removable and incorporate a console on the top sort of thing.

[Sammy]

so I was looking at fitting an earlier model commodore brake booster/master .... but theres all sorts of issues, master cylinder bores are not large enough, need to replace it with another part and all stuff like that, so in the interest of keeping the whole brake conversion from basically the one model of car I have purchased a VT-VY booster and master cylinder! it looks like it will fit ok under the bonnet if I move it down a bit lower than where it is currently mounted in the picture below.

so i will be welding up the holes in the firewall and re-drilling to suit this unit, and also got to get the shaft shortened and changed to suit the Bedford pedal then it should be pretty well sorted!

engineer should be happy that the master cylinder is matched to the brakes as well, and from all reports on commodore forums, the VT onwards booster/master gives a much better pedal feel than earlier ones!

[wendyh]

coming along great Sammy ! 
...so does the bonnet fit ok on that brake set up? 

[BusyKiwi]

The size of the booster doesn't really matter, I'm running a toyota windom on  my custom van with HQ discs up front and jag discs at rear.
A standard CF is big enough to run HQ discs and 9in diff brakes.
The main thing is disc/drum boosters are proportioned for big and small, drum/drum is small/small but enough to run discs. A jap disc/disc is enough to run drum/disc and disc/disc.

The front brakes is most of your braking, except in a commercial van/truck, they should have proportioning valve on the rear brakes to allow more braking with a load. Example an empty van should lock up all 4 at the same time (back after the front) but add a load and without the valve the back brakes wont lock up, the load will push through the rear brakes. Run a disc brake booster on a drum rear and it will pump enough fluid to stop on the load, but will lock up before the front without a load.
A custom interior is a load.

[Sammy]

yeah wendy it should JUST fit, I need to do some more work on getting it in the right location which I am hoping will allow it to fit with the reservoir that's on it now, failing that there is an earlier model reservoir that is angled at the front to make it a bit lower and it should give another 5-10mm clearance, but it definitely fits front to back no problems.

and I agree busy the booster is probably overkill, I never thought the stock Bedford brakes were really heavy, but its more that this master and booster bolt straight up to each other is the reason i'm using the complete lot.

[BusyKiwi]

Sorry I wasn't bagging you. I used the VN set up on my standard van because it was there

If the master reservier doesn't clear you can side mount it - mount it on the side and run rubber brake fluid safe lines to it

[Sammy]

yeah remote reservoir is the next option if this setup doesn't fit

as for the VN setup, I tried it the other week, and in all honesty its probably easier to put in than the one above

[Sammy]

I am very happy to report that the VT-VY brake conversion has been all finalised all that is really left to do is make some brake lines for it (I am going to put new lines throughout the entire van) and then some minor tidying up of the pedal assembly.

so after a lot of trial and error I eventually worked out the best location for the booster so the pushrod is straight from the pedal to the booster, and also with the VS reservoir on it just fits under the bonnet! once I had all the location sorted out I cut the section out of the firewall that had heaps of holes in it and welded a new section in, its only going to have the required holes in it

I also added a front support bracket to it which fits nicely onto the edge of the grille.

and also I got my dominator 2200rpm converter, should be very nice for getting the race car/trailer load up to speed so the converter and box is all back in and sorted finally!

feels like I actually made a lot of progress this weekend

[Sammy]

So I did most of that pedal finalisation stuff, I wanted to strengthen the pedal box where is bolts to the booster as there was a few holes in it after my trial and error, so I added some extra flat bar to them with only the required holes drilled into them! all that's really left now is to paint it!

In the end the pedal has ended up about 5mm further down than the original Bedford location, but this can be easily adjusted with the rose joint on the pushrod shaft if needs be!

I also finalised the bracket and mounting for the commodore fuse/relay panel in the engine bay, it fits in nicely below the original wiper washer reservoir! and once that was done I was then able to make some wiring mods to get the bits all connected properly (main battery wire to the fuse panel and such)

[restoreid]

Well done Sammy It's all coming together great Using late model parts is the go Keep the photos coming