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The next BTV for evaluation made it's way to us the end of the last week. Disassembly will start tomorrow that will include an assessment of both the vacuum side and hydraulic side. So far we can already see evidence of brake fluid breaking down and crystallizing from quickly removing the cap. There will be more pictures to come in the morning.

Thanks
James From
Kanter Auto Products


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The unit has been disassembled and evaluated.

The three pictures below are of when we just removed the filler cap cover and power unit plate. As you can clearly see the fluid had crystallized from not being flushed and maintained and then within the vacuum side the the fluid had leaked past the seal. As you can see the fluid is dirty and filled with rust.

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One interesting item within the power section that was found was the remnants of the insulating rubber washer that sat on the power piston unit that acted as a bumper/insulator between the power piston and backing plate. The rubber washer had fallen apart and fell into the unit and was partially wedge under the leather piston seal.


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With the power piston removed you can clearly see that the hydraulic section was leaking into the vacuum section for quiet sometime. There was a substantial amount of rust and brake fluid.

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Now with that vacuum can removed. We have access to the hydraulic sections rear seal. As you can see the rear seal have failed.

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Next to be removed was the poppet valve assembly. As you can see it was encased in crystallized brake fluid. Same can be said for the check valve as well.

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With the piston and seals to be the last out. We now can clean all components and asses what will need to be replaced and what can be reused. Of course the piston will be replaced with one of our brand new stainless steel ones as well as all the wearable seals and gaskets.

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Re Post #17 "I recently got back a 1953 clipper deluxe that I owned about twenty years ago"

George(pkdnut),
for including your '53 Clipper Deluxe Touring Sedan in the Packard Owner's Registry.

For those of you who may have missed the news this week, NHTSA has begun an investigation after several dozen Ford F-150 (the aluminum-bodied 2015-16 with the turbo V6) truck owners reported sudden and complete brake failure. Almost 400,000 are said to be affected, should there be a recall. Early findings report no reservoir brake fluid in most of the affected trucks that failed.

To me, this sounds like a failed seal that allows the engine to drink the brake fluid, perhaps suddenly without much warning. Now don't you feel somewhat better about those well-maintained BTVs that are six decades old? In both vehicles, careful monitoring of systems is important. The visible reservoir on a new Ford is so much easier to watch than on the buried master cylinders of my two 1956s. I hope Ford and their customers take this seriously. Those talented Bendix engineers that Fred has mentioned in the past, don't look so bad by comparison.

Actually I was a subcontractor at Ford at that time and argued for the need for a corporate guideline, risk management, and a statistical controls process to handle exactly this issue. They fired me.

Now they will probably put a private investigator on my ass for writing this. Screw them.

Looking at the BTV in these pictures I question whether the brake fluid itself is to blame. Obviously all that debris is interfering with the seals, but where is it coming from? If the debris is reaction with the old casting then flushing is merely reducing the likelihood of a catastrophic failure in a known unsafe area. A metallurgist really should be contacted to determine if there was a chromate coating on those castings that needs to be restored.