bawfuls

I submit an alternative option for a 1" brake master cylinder upgrade on the S30. The late 90's Toyota Tacoma brake booster has the same bolt pattern as the S30 on the firewall side. With some minor filing/grinding, and chopping about an inch off the brake booster input push rod that connects to the pedal, this booster can be installed in an S30. I do not know the exact range of years, but I used one for a 1997 Tacoma, 2WD smaller engine. This is the smaller booster of the era, at 8.7" diameter (still larger than the stock S30 booster, but it fits in the space fine). Oreilly and Autozone generally have this booster in stock, as a remanufacture (~$200). Then you can get a new 1" brake master cylinder (~$75) meant to mate to the Tacoma booster. Again this was in stock at my local Autozone. The new MC will require fresh brake hard lines for the short run from the cylinder to the distribution junction, since the orientation is different. All in all, slightly more expensive than the upgrade in the OP, but parts are newer and should be more reliable. Also by moving to a slightly bigger booster it helps alleviate some of the increased pedal pressure the 1" MC requires.

Picked up both parts and installed them today. A few notes on fitment: -The pushrod that connects to the brake pedal was too long for my 1977, I had to chop the end of it (twice, because I didn't want to chop too much) to get it to fit. -The neck or whatever of the booster didn't *quite* want to fit into the hole in my firewall. It was seizing on the top, so I filed out the edge of the hole there a bit and also the brake booster neck a touch, and everything fit alright. As someone noted earlier, the neck/pushrod isn't directly centered in the four bolts that go through the firewall, but it looks to be located in nearly the same spot as the stock one was anyway. -The brake line connections for this Tacoma master cylinder are located on the side and not the bottom, which means I need to run fresh lines. Thankfully, these are short runs to the junction just below, so it's nbd. A few pictures after install (yes I know I need hose clamps on those vacuum lines between the booster and vacuum pump)

Cool, that settles it then. Upgrades it is! if people are interested I can share how it all works out later, though the car won't be running for another month at best.

Yeah I did the common Toyota front caliper swap. So you're saying I need to go to a 1" master for those? That makes sense I suppose. Is there any reason to suspect the $75 Toyota 1" master cylinder from Autozone is bad?

I do not know for sure that my master cylinder needs replacing though. Oreilly claims to have a new 7/8' masters for the 280z available for order (though not in stock) for only $54 Or are those not actually compatible? I seem to recall reading about people haveing trouble with Oreilly and Autozone thinking they have compatible masters when they really don't.

I did not check the rod position so I can’t verify that. Also noticed the same thing 720fast did, a reman original for my ‘77 is $100 so I’m leaning that direction. Especially since I could retain my stock master cylinder.

Just got back from my local Oreilly's, where I looked at a 8.7" booster from a 1997 Tacoma (should be this one). I brought in the busted booster from my 4/77 280Z to compare. The bolt pattern on the firewall side of the boosters are identical! What's not a match is the master cylinder side. The matching master cylinder for this booster is $115 and a 1" bore compared to the stock 7/8". This feels like the simplest solution to me. It'll be a clear upgrade in stopping power, with a bit of an increase in pedal effort. But on the flip side, I'm doing an electric conversion so I get the bonus of regen braking to help alleviate that effort. Knowing the 1997 Tacoma bolt pattern is a match, we can look at other options online.

Bumping this because I have the same question. The brake booster on my '77 S30 is shot and I was similarly intrigued by the MCM claim of a plug in option from Toyota. Has anyone tried it yet?

Yeah you're probably right on that. I think the lights worked only some of the time before, I really didn't test them a lot until now. Obvious answer is to just rebuild the combo switch as many have done in the past.

Thank you for this, things worked exactly as you anticipated here. Power at #2, jumping 2-1 brought lights on but they don't come on when plugged in and with switch on. Time to search for combo switch repairs I suppose. Since this was working before I put in LEDs and then broke once I did, that makes me suspicious that a repaired switch will again fail with LEDs. From what I can tell via searches here and elsewhere, this isn't a typical issue though? The load resistor issue should matter for the flashers but I'm not even at that point yet.

Thanks for all the advice, took me about 6 hours today but I got the rear suspension back in. A few things to torque down once the car is back on the ground but now I am DONE replacing bushings. Feels good!

Anything else I should check before laborously tracing wires around the car looking for frayed insulation/shorts?

Today I finally did this and it came out within about 5 minutes. Now I'm fighting the new bushings that are slightly thicker so they don't want to fit over the spindle upon reinstall. I think I saw some people freeze them or something to shrink them and get the control arm back in place? Are there other clever tricks for this or should I just sand a milimeter or two off the bushings? edit: here's a couple images of what I'm talking about

update: new saw blade cut through the spindle pin... and shaved that housing down a touch too (the red is the paint from the saw blade) Then after lots of heat and some hammering on the other end I got to here, cut end: other end: Hammering with an extension hasn't done anything. It is of course more difficult to hammer now with the control arm removed and the assembly just waving in the wind. Anything else worth trying at this point before removing the assembly from the car?

Yeah, the tool is basically the approach I took myself with the nut and spacer but now it's seized/stripped. I have a battery operated sawzall here just need to pick up some new blades

This is the 5-speed on a '77 280z. When I pulled the engine last month there was trans fluid in the bell housing, so I presumed a front seal leak. But when I removed the front cover, this is what things looked like: Here's the cover as well: I replaced the front seal, but the old one looked fine and the input shaft wasn't even really covered in oil, so I don't think that's where it was leaking. To me this looks like it's the gasket that's failing, but I wanted to check with the more knowledgeable folks here for confirmation. Is there anything else I should inspect or replace here before replacing the gasket and assuming things are fine? I also stupidly drained the fluid before removing the fill plug (which is not moving now), so any suggestions about how to refill the trans without removing it from the car would be appreciated. I think I saw some people have filled it through the shifter hole?

Yeah that' seems obvious now. Yesterday was a long day of futility and I was a bit fried by the time I posted. If a fresh blade doesn't work this week I'll pull the assembly and take it to a shop.

I would try pounding it back in but the spacer prevents that right now. Need to remove the stripped nut in order to do that. This car has been stripped of it's engine (and exhaust, fuel tank, etc) so it's not relocating to a shop any time soon. I guess if I really couldn't do it myself, I could put the wheels back on, put the other control arm back on, rent a trailer to put it on, and take it over to a shop. But that sounds like more work than just getting this thing out myself.

I managed to remove one, with a combination of heat and hammering. The second is proving much more challenging. Here's the current status: The pin is about 3 inches removed, through again a combination of mostly heat and hammering. But I also tried pulling this one, i.e. I put a spacer (that section of threaded pipe and a couple washers) on the end and then cranked down the nut. Eventually the nut stripped, and now it won't even back off. It just tuns in place. I tried wedging a screwdriver in between the washers to put some force on the nut and back it off, but that didn't work. I heated the control arm with a torch until the rubber bushing inside caught fire, then hammered the other end with an extension inserted, but it still won't move from it's current spot. I even tried cutting between two of the washers but after removing a bunch of washer it started grinding down and eventually bent my sawsall blade. I do not know what is left to try, aside from going to get new blades and continue cuting. But even if I cut the stripped bolt off, the pin is still stuck inside. I searched but most old threads say "lots of heat" so I'm posting for more ideas. I am just replacing bushings, not the whole suspension so any way I can do this without removing everything from the car would be preferable.

That's a good point. I just checked with an LCR meter and these two fuses I pulled both measure 0.1-0.2 Ohms, which ought to mean they are fine. I checked all the rest of the fuses in that box on the passenger kick panel and they all measured less than 0.2 Ohms, except the one labeled "Floor Temp Lamp" which looks busted anyway. It's only a 1 amp fuse, surely it can't be the culprit for the lights issue?

So none of the fuses look busted to me, but some are deformed. Here's an example: Others are perfectly flat without any of those horizontal lines in them.

I will try it with the hazard switch, but to be clear the lights all worked for a couple weeks without the console or dash in the car so there is likely another issue at work too.

The center console has been out for several weeks. I know the turn signals won't flash with it and the dash out, but the front ones at least came on in running light mode before, and the brake lights and side lights and headlights all came on fine with the console and dash removed just a few weeks ago. The fusible links looked alright last I checked, but I can clean off the contacts just to be sure. The multi-function switch does work for the wipers currently.

I just got through replacing the head unit and speakers on my '77 last week and the wiring was tricky. The stock wiring has a single ground coming out of the head unit, which is wired to BOTH speakers' negative terminals and then a common ground somewhere. Modern head units do not do this, instead carrying a separate ground for each speaker output plus another for the unit itself. So I had to run new wires for each speaker, but it was really easy honestly. Although my car did have an aftermarket head unit (with 8-track player!) from back in the day so perhaps some differences. New two-way 4" speakers that mounted right into the factory holes were only $40 for the pair, and new head units can be had for $100 or less depending on what you want. I spent $60 more than that for this RetroSound because I wanted it to look a bit more period-correct. The whole process took me a couple hours (though I already had the dash and center console out for other reasons) and the sound quality upgrade is night and day. Absolutely worth upgrading IMO. Here's a test fit of the new head unit in the console (faceplate is rough cut here, I sanded it down later):