Hard pedal, almost no brakes 68 continental

[Cole1968]

I'm going to take it around the yard and see if I can lock up the brakes,I have not tried "slamming" the brake pedal yet I'll see what happens. I did check each wheel and they are locking/ not turnable by hand. I personally do believe it is the booster I just wanted to rule out every other possibility since brake booster for the car are very hard to find, very expensive or need to be sent out for rebuild

[TonyC]

Okay; let us know how that test goes, Cole. I'm guessing that you'll have to almost stand on the pedal to stop the car, but it will stop. That is the sign of a blown booster. Yes, boosters are expensive to service...but the good thing is that they can be serviced.

We at the Forum endorse Booster Dewey, who is located in Oregon. You should find contact info for him in the "Vendors" category of the Forum. It will run you in the range of about $300 or so...but once it's done, you may never have to shell out that cost for that kind of repair again.

---Tony

[papawayne]

And, you get free booster "nuts". Wayne

[mge825y]

I called Booster Dewey last year (2020) to see if they were interested in an old brake booster core I had. Seems that Dewey has retired but the business was still going. http://boosterdeweyexchange.com/

They definitely can rebuild yours if you send them your core. And, you never know, you might get lucky and they will have a rebuilt one already in inventory.

[Cole1968]

So I took it around the yard today and tried slamming on the brakes,None of the wheels locked up.The car just came to an abrupt stop.

[action]

How old are the pads and shoes?

Glazed friction material and drums/rotors will act like that. The fix can be just scuffing up the metal rotors and drums. Won't take the glaze off of the friction material. But some sand paper on a rotor and drum is pretty cheap & easy thing to do. And cheap and easy doesn't happen a lot for a slab side.

Action

[action]

Glazing can happen if the brakes get too hot or the friction material ingests too much debris.

The debris prevents friction material from grabbing the metal. Because it is no longer all of the brake friction material, it is that and other stuff that does not work as well. Brake metal that has gotten too hot will change the metal.

Both issues will cause braking performance to be reduced

Action

[TonyC]

That is a good point. A couple years ago I had a problem with Frankenstein's rear brakes: When I pressed the pedal, the whole rear end would shudder like an earthquake. On a hunch I bought a new set of shoes and installed them, which cured the problem. If you aren't sure how old your brake linings are, buy new linings. They can be had at parts stores, although they may have to be special-ordered, and they aren't that expensive.

Of course, keep in mind the special attention you need to give to the fronts. I'm not sure how different the '68 system is from '67, but I'm sure the shop manual will tell you what you need to do to prep the calipers for resetting. In '67 there is a pin that needs to be pulled outward and held outward to free up the fluid lines and allow the caliper pistons to be pushed back into their bores. Something similar, although of a different design, should apply to '68, so remember to do that. If you don't, you risk pushing out some pistons while trying to push in others. Popping one out of a caliper is something you want to avoid, even though replacement calipers can be had through some parts stores (O'Reilly, for example). Another way to do that would be to loosen the bleeder plug at the caliper, but that gets messy, and then you have to have new fluid on hand to replace what you lose.

---Tony

[tomo]

Because your pedal drop test was inconclusive ("I did try pumping the brakes with car off , when I started the car the pedal seemed to go down, I'm going to try it again."), the booster is the prime suspect. If the shoes on the rear drums are adjusted correctly and the booster was working, you should have been able to lock the rear wheels if there was a problem with the calipers.

[Cole1968]

So I did end up having the booster rebuilt and it took care of all of my problems, I still need to recenter the valve but otherwise it stops fantastic now.

-colr