Hello my Buick Brothers and Sisters. Hope you can help me with this as I knew it would be eventually an issue with time. And it as come to a head or that time now. My plugs all turned white and I suspect and I'm 100% sure my brake booster is old and cracked. In other words one big vacuum leak. I used a pressure/ vacuum tool to see if the booster would hold vacuum and it held nothing. Yes I even put my lips up to a hose and did the suction test. Held for about a five seconds or so and slowly went to nothing. My question is how does one seperate both halves to the booster to remove the rubber diapram? Is there a special tool that is used? I would like to do this with as little damage as possible. It appears to me that it's suppost to twist apart. However when using a screwdriver there is a lot of resistance to twist. IE no movement. It's never been apart so I expected that. Anyway if anyone out there has some pointers or some helpful advice I would appreciate it. Where can you get a new diaphram? Are they available? Thank you! John. ou:
Have you tried driving the car with the boost vacuum line plugged off to see if your brakes respond the same way...lots of pedal pressure to stop? If in fact your booster is bad, have you considered marching down to Auto Zone etc, and picking up a rebuilt one? If anyone has disected a booster to replace a diaphram its a first for me, I always figured a lot of spec tools were involved.
When I'd did drive the car a little while ago, the action on the brake pedal was bad. I knew there was a problem. There are no Autozones here in Seattle but I will check an equivalant store. I was told sometime ago these could be taken apart. Hmmm??? Maybe bad information. Far as I know it's just a rubber diaphram inside. R&R and you're done. John. o No:
no special tools needed. just a vice. the easiest way is to just bend the loops off of the tabs (red arrow) and and the booster should pop apart. to reassemble you just hold the parts together again and bend the tabs back (hammer works to tap them into place.) also to reassemle just put some silicone grease on the mating surfaces of the rubber and the metal halves push down on the outter half onto the lower half making sure to note the orginal orientation with the green arrow tabs (mark before dissassembly) there is a spring inside but it only takes 5-10 lbs to compress it. the problem comes when you need to find a replacement diaphram. not sure where to get just that. -nate
Way I did it was to bolt old master cylinder to booster. Clamp master cylinder in vise (thats why you use an old one). Now you very carefully go around the tabs with a claw hammer and gently nudge them, thats it. Just enough to break any corrosion there. you could put some penetrating oil on first as well. Then you get two big crescent wrenches. Tape the jaws up so they won't mar the surface (if you care), put one on each side of the mounting bracket across from each other which gives you lots of leverage, and twist. It will pop right off....also keep in mind there is a spring inside there...its not strong but its there so as you disengage it the booster half will pop up. Don't touch that small round metal sleeve part in the center at the back, it will bend very easily, you just want to engage the mounting bracket. If you bend the tabs over and then back again they could break. Its designed to rotate together, so do it that way. But really, the only reason to go through all this work would be to keep your original booster...if you don't care about numbers, just buy a replacement. Not much to them really, but no idea where you could buy parts retail. later Tim
