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Good morning everyone. Can someone recommend where l can buy the correct master cylinder for my car. All the ones so far l,ve found are for manual transmissions, my car has the excellent turbo 400. Automatic! Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Do you know if your car has a Bendix MC or a Moraine? Posting a picture with the identifying numbers could enable someone to help you. Raybestos makes some replacements which may not look exactly like your unit but may fit.
Another option is to send your unit to these guys for a rebuild:
Do you know if your car has a Bendix MC or a Moraine? Posting a picture with the identifying numbers could enable someone to help you. Raybestos makes some replacements which may not look exactly like your unit but may fit.
Another option is to send your unit to these guys for a rebuild:
Fusick shows availability of a new Moraine master cylinder. I wonder why all the vendors say that their M/C is for manual transmission cars? What does which transmission a car has have to do with the brakes? I wonder if all of those "manual transmission" M/C's would work with automatic transmission cars. Especially since I'd have to believe that a large majority of 1965 full-size Oldsmobiles were equipped with an automatic transmission.
By the way, while all Oldsmobiles are certainly "dynamite" cars, your car is presumably a DyNAMIC 88.
So far, this thread has focused on factory-correct single hydraulic circuit master cylinders. You’ll get no argument from me that those parts are correct. Factory correct for 1965.
That was 60 years ago. I’m 61…
Today’s cars have better brakes. New cars stop in shorter distances than a ‘65-66 Olds system can. Unless you leave enough room, the relatively weaker 1965 brakes can cause you to be the main character in a rear end accident. As a matter of experience, here in the SF Bay, if you leave a lot of room for brake-safety, people cut in just about 90% of the time. Ugh.
Consider an upgrade to a 1967 drum brake dual master cylinder. If a rubber line fails in the 1967 system, at all times you have 50% of your brakes. If you blow a hose in a 1965-1966 single master system, you lose all hydraulic braking. Then you must trust the emergency brake to keep you from hitting something/someone. Or find an uphill climb to bring the car to a stop like I did in the ‘80’s.
The factory path is a single master cylinder. If a 60 year old rubber hose fails, you are subject to a total brake failure. Been there, did that. I recommend upgrading. Or stay right on top of your rubber hoses.
The next least expensive / easy path is a 1967 dual master (dual hydraulic circuit) for 4 wheel drums. I believe the US government legally required dual masters in 1967. Solid choice, but you’ll still need to leave room since lighter cars with better brakes stop shorter than you…
The next most expensive is to swap in front disk/rear drum with a dual master cylinder system. Ideally you get the proportioning block that has the electric switch in it. You can wire this to your brake switch light to warn you of pressure loss. That’s where I wound up on both of my ‘66 big cars. Good spot.
You can engineer 4 wheel disk brakes, but that gets pretty exotic & expensive and I have no experience there.
Upshot/TLDR - in both of my ‘66 big cars, I’m running front disc/rear drum, dual master cylinder brakes. I believe it’s a good optimization between what Olds did in 1966 and where we are 60 years later.
Agree with Cfair , i,m very satisfied with the new dual MC in our 98 -65 . But important to have distance to other cars
in highway speeds with the drumbrakes. Discbrakes in front would be really nice but feels nice to have the dual
MC , we usually try to avoid highway roads. I don´t think the emergency brakepedal would help if needed .
Chris , have read that front brakeparts from 69-70 Electra will fit on the Olds but do ju need 15" wheels for caliper
clearence ?
It’s quite possible that 69-70 Electra parts will fit 88/98/Starfires from 1965-1970, but I’ve never tried it. I’m no expert, but my impression is that after each division experimenting with their own disk brakes in 65-67, it feels like GM put in a cost controlling command and parts started to get more common among the divisions in 69-70. But there is a hard stop at the end of 1970 because in 1971 Olds went to front steering knuckles leaving behind the tradition of rear steering knuckles going back to at least 1965, perhaps earlier.
Two things I can confirm:
1) If you switch to factory style front disk brakes on 65-70 big Olds cars, you will need to use 15” wheels. Also those wheels will need to be shaped to make space for the disk brake calipers. In those year GM made both disk brake wheels and drum brake wheels. The drum brake wheels will not fit over the disk brake calipers.
2) 1965-1966, Olds only used 14” wheels on the big cars, so if you switch to a 15” wheel, you will need new hubcaps. There are many choices here, but they will not look factory 1965-66. For my 98, I used 1971 98 hubcaps. For my ‘66 Starfire, I used 1966 Olds 3-bar spinners on top of 1971 3049b Chevy fake wire wheels. Somewhere here on CO are pictures of my cars and their sort-of-factory looking hubcaps. They will never fool a purist, but I’m not trying to fool anyone. I just like disk brakes and the larger tire/wheel combinations that GM went to when the 70’s began.
Glenn,
I have had front disk brakes on my '66 big cars for 35-40 years. I have never had any regrets about spending the money or making the cars "less correct" I can not remember any situation where the disk brakes "saved" me, but it is very nice to go 120km/h or more and know that those disks can stop the car. There is no avoiding the fact that these were heavy cars and that modern vehicle traffic is more dense than it was when these cars were made.
To me, the burden (demand) is on us old-car owners to keep up with the time, at least to a certain level.
I will not be putting 4 wheel disk brakes on my cars (well, at least until someone makes an ABS software retrofit kit!), but getting to at least 1975 standards feels right for how I use these cars. I use them as almost-daily drivers.
I live a little north of San Francisco and enjoy taking them on the motorway (freeway til oss...). Just last week I took my convertible to Napa just to clean out the cooling system on a sunny warm day. It was a fantastic drive, but the best part was going about 80 km/h on 2 lane roads in the country side with the top down. Perfekt. These cars were built for the freeways, not really tight turns on country roads, but either way, any investment you make in safety will give you confidence to carry family & friends and know that you are doing the best you can for their safety (and yours).
You will find this change a bit of a challenge. If you can find original parts, get everything between the upper & lower ball joints. But you will very likely find that the brake rotors are too thin to meet safety standards. See this thread for details on one not-quite-factory option in the case where you cannot locate good quality original parts.
Just to finish this topic out, this is a very worthwhile task and it's very interesting to figure out how to solve an important problem. Well, it's not world hunger, but the problem is important to us.
I would like to thank everyone for there reply’s. I have replaced the master cylinder with a gm factory part and the brakes are great. I do realize it’s classic and l drive it like a classic, l don’t tailgate and yes: l do leave plenty of distance in front and true to nature l get cut off plenty. I just hold my breath and back off.What makes it so enjoyable is the accolades l get from other drivers respecting the classics, such as a thumbs up, horn toot, and smiles. I have driven this car from coast to coast and met so many people l would have never met,
