11 Attachment(s)
Marks 4WD Adaptors Hydraulic brake booster upgrade
Some of you will probably remember this incident that really made me look at options for improving the stopping power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q6G7yhq9cs
Last month I fitted the Marks 4WD Adaptors hydraulic brake booster and braided brake lines.
I'll skip the whole removal and installation, but flag some points that may be helpful for others fitting this unit.
The kit comes with everything required and is pretty straightforward to install. Having said that, the unit is about 30mm-40mm longer than the factory booster so it is challenging to fit with the fuse box in the engine bay.
It took two of us a whole day to remove and fit the booster and replace all brake lines with the braided ones.
The only thing that required some modification was the bracket that holds the fuel filter, as one of the hard lines from the master cylinder fouled on it due to the extended length of the hydraulic unit.
Before:
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After:
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Here are pics of trying to fit it with the fuse box:
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And this is the part of the bracket we had to modify to clear the brake line:
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So I will say the difference is amazing!
Instead of slowing you down like you were coming to the end of a theme park ride, as the factory brakes do, it now responds more like a car. The brake pedal has a firm feel with little give in it, and it now takes less pressure to get a response.
A friend of mine runs a garage that performs roadworthy inspections. They use a machine to measure braking performance as part of that test, so I arranged a before and after to see the difference it made on my car. It has a sensor to also measure pedal force.
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(Note: on Marks 4WD Adaptors website, they have test results braking from 100km/h using a 79 series dual cab LandCruiser weighing 3780kg)
Braking Distance – Standard factory vacuum – 98 metres
Braking Distance – Marks4wd Hydraulic booster – 58 metres
So this is the result of my experience, and I made sure nothing changed between tests (this is with an unloaded car, no passengers, no spare wheel, front tyre pressure 33 PSI, rear tyre pressure 35 PSI running 10+ year old 285/75R16 tyres with roughly 5mm tread, standard rotors and callipers)
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You can see that the distance was reduced slightly, but the pedal effort was greatly reduced. During the hydraulic adaptor test, pedal application had to be backed off as the wheels started to lock up (no ABS). With the factory set up, there was absolutely no way that you would be able to lock the wheels on my car.
I am very pleased with this modification and I don't feel like I will require any heavy-duty pads to further improve the performance as it may just induce locking the wheels more easily.