The El Camino Needs a Manual Brake Conversion!

The El Camino is coming back to life and there are some issues to address. First off, the brakes need to be taken care of. The rotors have stress cracks and the rear drums are glazed from the years of burn outs with no line locks. These brakes were getting to be a little scary to bring this down from 100+ mph passes in the quarter mile. To fix this, I’m replacing all parts on the front discs and rear drums, and I’m installing a Line Lock to help me out in the burnout box. I’m not stopping there, I’m also going to swap over to a manual master cylinder from a vacuum assist system. This does a large number of things. It frees up space, saves a little weight from the vacuum booster and will give me a better pedal feel to make staging the car at the track much easier.
I’m using a kit from ManualBrakes.com which includes the master cylinder, firewall adapter and all the parts to make this happen. Here’s a link to the kit: www.manualbrak...
I’m also using a Line Lock like this one: www.jegs.com/i...
Starting out, the drum brakes on the back are my first step, I’m not fond of working on drum brakes, so I decided to get them out of the way first. I’m replacing the shoes, the drum and the wheel cylinders so I can start with a clean slate. I also found a trick to install the clip style wheel cylinder in the video. Most of the parts are normal replacement parts from AC Delco.
The Front Discs are easy by comparison to the drums. I’m replacing the rotor, the caliper, brake hoses and the pads. The calipers are remanufactured, which is important to this install. The original calipers were low friction and had extra features that do not work with a manual system.
Finally after the parts replacement came all of the modification for the manual master cylinder. The removal of all the old components comes first followed be a few adjustments to fit the master cylinder to the car. The brake pedal assembly does get removed and modified as well as some of the firewall will need to be modified for clearance for the new parts.
After the master was mounted, the line lock got plumbed once I found a suitable location for it.
I have not yet bled the system, that will be coming up on the next installment! Stay tuned for more!
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[@RedRaider180J]

Great video. Did the manual conversion on my 78 Bu about 10 years ago…one of the best mods I’ve done.

[@SnowFamilyRacing]

I'm sure it will be a good thing for this once it's done. After this was recorded, I ran into an issue with one of the new brake hoses leaking at the crimp to the rubber. They're an inexpensive part, and I've seen other off the shelf hydraulic lines leak recently. I think I'll go to something a bit more appropriate for the track use this car is going to see.

[@OndreaS123]

Eric- look into speed bleeders, might save time when you have to bleed brakes.

[@SnowFamilyRacing]

I'd love to get one of the ones that applies pressure at the master cylinder. That seems like the way to go!

[@morrisrodney19]

I wasn’t able to get any brake fluid at none of the brake calipers im using a wilwood master cylinder manual

[@SnowFamilyRacing]

I'm wondering if the master is bled properly. Air at the master will make it not flow much or at all at the wheel cylinders.

[@morrisrodney19]

I m try bleeding it again

[@hiddenman99]

Do u have a video on the frame knotch?

[@SnowFamilyRacing]

That was before I was making videos. I went crazy with a Sawzall and used a wheel tub kit from jegs. It was really easy on an El Camino. No back seat to worry about. I've got a few videos very early in my video journey that talk about how I braced up the frame. They're still up, and the production quality was low since I had just started making videos.