1955, adding original style power brake booster

[Tom Bloesch]

My father in law gave me his 1955 TBird that he had been restoring, his health prevented him from finishing. Included was an original style brake booster kit, the booster is an actual Midland booster, unfortunately there were no installation instructions. I have installed most of the parts by following pictures online. My question is, Does the booster connect to both front and rear brakes, or only the front? The car has drum brakes front and rear, it also has the factory brake master cylinder. After that problem is addressed, What is the bleeding process? Do I bleed the brake booster first, then each individual brake? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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[Tom Alpers]

Without the booster the line from the master cylinder goes down to a distribution block below it on that frame. That block has the brake light switch on one port. It also has a port for the line to the rear brakes and another port that feeds the front brakes thru a separate distribution block farther forward on the frame rail. You don't need to mess with any of that except for one thing. When you add the booster you disconnect the distribution block end of the existing line that runs from the master cyl down to that block and reconnect that end to the input port of the booster. Then you get a new line and connect it from the output port of the booster back down to where the master cylinder line originally was on the distribution block. When you are done both the front and rear brakes will be boosted. The booster cylinder has a bleeder screw on it and that's the one you bleed first. Then do a normal system bleed: right rear, left rear, right front, left front.

 

[Tom Bloesch]

Thank you Tom for your response, that was exactly what I needed to know.