Now that I have my truck on the street and with some miles on it, I thought I would review the hydroboost brake setup I am using.
I love the feel of the brakes and there is very light pedal force required. The truck stops great.
* My truck has four wheel discs (Chevelle front clip with disc / Cadillac Seville Disc brake rearend)
A Hydroboost setup directly replaces your brake diaphram and uses hydraulic pressure from your power steering pump to provide power assist brakes. A lot of cars and heavy trucks with diesel engines use a hydroboost system.
I went with a hydroboost due two reasons:
1. My truck does not make a lot of vacuum with the Edelbrock RPM package cam
2. I was using a single stage diaphram vacuum booster (should have used a two stage booster)
Because of both 1 & 2 I had very little power brake assist.
You can buy the whole package (booster and lines) from a couple of different online street rod suppliers for about $500 - $700. I am on a budget so I purchased a new hydrobooster for a Astro van for about $120 and made up my own hardlines. It was a simple replacement of the existing vacuum diaphram. The only hard part was running the lines back to my master cylinder (I have the under floor mounted setup, similiar to stock location).
The setup is plumbed:
Power steering pump pressure out >> Hydro boost >> From hydro boost out you have two return lines. One is high pressure and goes to your power steer box pressure in and the other line is low pressure fluid return. The low pressure tees with your low pressure out from your power steer box and then back to the power steering pump resevoir.
