I decided I wanted to remove the air compressor on my 404; I assumed it was for a trailer brake system, as the truck had a mondo huge hitch on it. The air compressor hasn't been hooked up in ages, and it looks like there isn't a pulley on the engine side for the belt even if I wanted to hook it up.
So, last night I extracted the air compressor; took about an hour or so, not too bad. This afternoon I started disconnecting all the various lines. Some appear to have been disconnected previously, as there were a couple of open connectors; almost all of them broke lose with minimal effort. When I broke the rearmost connections loose, a ton of rusty crap spilled out.
Things were going great until I went to remove this booster thing. I never really looked at very closely before, and after getting the big lines off, I went to remove the small lines. Hmm. These have brake fluid in them, and it's fresh - I know this because I flushed everything with ATE Super Blue. After a little more investigation, some googling, it appears that what I actually have is air-over-hydraulic brake assist (is that the proper way to say it?) My guess is the missing connections were for the trailer portion of the system. I looked up a couple of diagrams, but I couldn't make heads or tails of them; I may not have even been looking at the right diagram.
This is an ex-polizei truck, and from my tiny bit of research it appears that it would very likely have had air-assisted brakes.
So now the quandary is: do I put the compressor back in and restore the system to full operation, or do I continue to dismember it? I think the air-assisted brakes would be cool - and would definitely help - but to put the system back to original condition would be a lot of work and $$$ because it has been neglected for so long.
In the mean time, the booster is leaking (see pic), so I should probably "plumb around" that for the time being. My thought was to plug the two extra lines on the fitting under the spare tire area, which would isolate the rear brake line; what size plug do I need? Nothing in my random pile of hardware fits the junction.
So, should I restore it, or is it even worth the hassle?
So, last night I extracted the air compressor; took about an hour or so, not too bad. This afternoon I started disconnecting all the various lines. Some appear to have been disconnected previously, as there were a couple of open connectors; almost all of them broke lose with minimal effort. When I broke the rearmost connections loose, a ton of rusty crap spilled out.
Things were going great until I went to remove this booster thing. I never really looked at very closely before, and after getting the big lines off, I went to remove the small lines. Hmm. These have brake fluid in them, and it's fresh - I know this because I flushed everything with ATE Super Blue. After a little more investigation, some googling, it appears that what I actually have is air-over-hydraulic brake assist (is that the proper way to say it?) My guess is the missing connections were for the trailer portion of the system. I looked up a couple of diagrams, but I couldn't make heads or tails of them; I may not have even been looking at the right diagram.
This is an ex-polizei truck, and from my tiny bit of research it appears that it would very likely have had air-assisted brakes.
So now the quandary is: do I put the compressor back in and restore the system to full operation, or do I continue to dismember it? I think the air-assisted brakes would be cool - and would definitely help - but to put the system back to original condition would be a lot of work and $$$ because it has been neglected for so long.
In the mean time, the booster is leaking (see pic), so I should probably "plumb around" that for the time being. My thought was to plug the two extra lines on the fitting under the spare tire area, which would isolate the rear brake line; what size plug do I need? Nothing in my random pile of hardware fits the junction.
So, should I restore it, or is it even worth the hassle?
but been there, done that 
