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reworked 1994 Dodge Ram 1500 - new Master Brake Cylinder - Photo 32652906

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  • After we had the tires on the truck, but before we took it off of jackstands, we decided to run it a bit to get the new fluids well circulated and to check for leaks. Upon stopping, we went to put it in Park, and were met with a horrible grinding noise. Apparently, the rear brakes weren't working. After some head-scratching and re-inspecting the rear shoes and drums, we noticed a leak from the master cylinder between the plastic reservoir and metal base. After shopping around a bit at local parts stores, we found a better deal with no core charge at Summit, and we had the new master cylinder (p/n DHB-M39646) in hand two days later; the mystery of why the front brakes were gone but the rear brakes were great was solved.
After we had the tires on the truck, but before we took it off of jackstands, we decided to run it a bit to get the new fluids well circulated and to check for leaks. Upon stopping, we went to put it in Park, and were met with a horrible grinding noise. Apparently, the rear brakes weren't working. After some head-scratching and re-inspecting the rear shoes and drums, we noticed a leak from the master cylinder between the plastic reservoir and metal base. After shopping around a bit at local parts stores, we found a better deal with no core charge at Summit, and we had the new master cylinder (p/n DHB-M39646) in hand two days later; the mystery of why the front brakes were gone but the rear brakes were great was solved.
Even though the old battery did (barely) manage to start the truck after sitting for seven months, it was just plain nasty, and the date stamp read "2002." We decided to replace it with a 34M-PC1500 Odyssey battery from West Coast Batteries. The "M" designation gets us additional top-mounted terminals for accessories, along with the no-worries 880 cold cranking amps and 135-minute reserve capacity; West Coast always has the battery we want in stock. Once the truck was cranking strong, we turned our attention to the burnt-smelling fluids. We replaced everything with Royal Purple. Again, for minimizing wear and maximizing mileage and performance, we've had good results with Royal Purple. The company is now also making oil filters, so we used that as well. All told, we replaced the engine oil, transmission fluid, transfer-case fluid, front and rear axle gear oil, and power steering fluid. Some people ask us about the seals leaking after switching to synthetic, and sure it is a possibility, but we'll take the improved wear resistance and protection against viscosity breakdown over potential seal leaks any day. Basically, we look at it as good insurance as well as possibly extending the life of our higher-mileage truck. While we were concerned about costs, one of the things we didn't want to do was cheap out on was the radiator. We've had problems with leaking crimped tanks in our Jeeps, especially in rough desert roads, and we wanted to increase the cooling system capacity and efficiency. We found just what we needed in the form of direct-replacement, fully-welded, all-aluminum Griffin two-core radiator from Summit Racing (p/n GRI-5-594GG-BAX), and about six gallons of 300,000-mile Be-Cool coolant. We also added some Purple Ice by Royal Purple for increased cooling efficiency. Whether towing or desert bashing, the combination of fluids and big Griffin radiator should keep the engine cool, no matter what. Running into the guardrail took its toll on the tie rod and drag link. Both were tweaked pretty good. We tried to use a bottle jack to straighten them out, but ultimately had to pull them off and put them in a hydraulic press to straighten them out. We got them straight and then sleeved them with some .188-inch-wall tubing to keep them that way, only to discover that the drag link really needs a little bit of bend to it. Unfortunately, after sleeving them, there was no way to bend it back to where it needed to be, so we ground down the threads on the tie-rod ends so we could adjust the steering correctly. We'll need to come back to this later, but for the time being it'll work. Part of the guardrail joust made the radiator bust a seal at the tank. The busted seal made the previous owner dump a ton of stop-leak into the system and basically mangled everything in the system. The water pump was leaking; we think the original hoses from 1994 were on the truck (they were that soft and spongy), and who knows what shape the thermostat was in. We turned to Summit Racing to replace all of it, in the form of a Flow Kooler high-flow water pump (p/n BRA-1790), Mr Gasket high-flow thermostat (p/n MRG-4365), new rubber upper and lower radiator hoses, new bypass hose, and a new Proliance Ready-Aire heater core (p/n PLI-398313). One common yet lesser-known issue with these Magnum motors is that the plenum seal tends to fail. The two-piece intake has a plate that keeps the intake charge from the oil in the lifter valley, but the plate is thin sheetmetal, and over time the seal can blow out. That results in oil in the intake, fouled plugs, poor idling, and more. Hughes Engines has come up with a solution in the form of a 1/4-inch-thick CNC-machined plate and new seal that will keep the oil from the air for the foreseeable future. The kit includes the aluminum plate, a new plenum seal, new intake manifold seals, new intake manifold bolts, and new plenum bolts (p/n HUG-7714). The shocks that were on the truck were shot, and we knew we needed something that would work for a variety of conditions; from unloaded street driving, to canyon-carving, to towing, to desert running, we wanted it to be the best it could everywhere. We have always liked the adjustable Rancho shocks for just those reasons, but the new My Ride system makes it so much easier. With an FM remote control and an underhood compressor and control box, we can change the ride profile from the cab with a remote we keep in the center console. If you've never worked on one of these trucks, let us tell you it is a bear to get back to the distributor. Thanks to the set-back nature of the engine, the tall barrel-shaped intake, and the pseudo cab-forward design, the distributor is entirely under the cowl and buried in vacuum and electrical lines. While we had the plenum off, we looked at the cap, and like many other things, it needed attention and we wondered if it was the original cap. We replaced the cap, rotor, wires, and coil with a Summit Racing Tune-up Kit (p/n SUM-867815CR with p/n HYP-4066) and a set of eight E3 spark plugs (p/n ETP-E3-48) in an attempt to maximize mileage and performance out of our big V-8.
While we had the plenum off, we noticed that the water pump housing was leaking oil at the oil pan, so we pulled the harmonic balancer and four extra bolts to fix that leak, too. We found more than a leak. The timing chain had just over 5/8 inch of slack in it and we had to replace it. So back to Summit Racing we went for a new Cloyes double-roller timing chain set (p/n CLO-9-1103) that we installed straight-up. We toyed with the idea of retarding or advancing it, but in the end, the minimal potential gains didn't outweigh the potential problems that the fuel injection system might see from doing so. As we went to put the harmonic balancer back on, we found that the stock balancer had lost half of its rubber and was on the verge of becoming a two-piece unit. Once again, Summit Racing came to the rescue with a budget-minded replacement from Dorman (p/n 594-133). Before we got into this project, we didn't think of Summit Racing as a replacement-parts house, just performance parts. We now go online to Summit Racing first to look for any part we need, whether it is performance or just a factory replacement. The old tires were last replaced in '04 (by the date code on the tire) and were not only dry-rotted, but worn poorly and half-bald. We wanted a tire that would handle off-road high-speed abuse and perform great on-road when towing. We settled on the Goodyear Wrangler SilentArmor, which gives us a layer of Kevlar belting to take the abuse, plenty of sipes for wet and winter traction, and two fairly large circumferential grooves for better off-road traction. The truck had up-sized 285/75R16 tires on it when we got it, so that's the tire size we put back on. It might be too tall for decent towing with the factory 3.55:1 gears, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to return to a smaller tire. Once we got the truck up on jackstands, we noticed deep grooves in the front rotors, and almost no brake pad left through the side window. We wanted to upgrade the braking to better bring the trailer to a stop, but didn't want to live with any squealing day-to-day. So we went with Hawk Performance High Performance Street pads for a 20-to 40-percent increase in stopping and increased resistance to brake fade. The rotors were way under-spec, so we went with higher-end Centric brake rotors from Napa with a lifetime warranty. After we had the tires on the truck, but before we took it off of jackstands, we decided to run it a bit to get the new fluids well circulated and to check for leaks. Upon stopping, we went to put it in Park, and were met with a horrible grinding noise. Apparently, the rear brakes weren't working. After some head-scratching and re-inspecting the rear shoes and drums, we noticed a leak from the master cylinder between the plastic reservoir and metal base. After shopping around a bit at local parts stores, we found a better deal with no core charge at Summit, and we had the new master cylinder (p/n DHB-M39646) in hand two days later; the mystery of why the front brakes were gone but the rear brakes were great was solved. After seven days of wrenching and parts-swapping, we ended up with a pile of junk parts and a truck that ran and drove 100 times better than it was when we got it. Now that we've got the truck safe to drive, stay tuned for the next installment, where we make it into something that won't bring down property values wherever we go.
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