Brakes in Vogue

 Have been fiddling around with improving the brake system.
Wanted some power assist and thought having dual circuit brakes would be a good idea.
Yes  I could have fitted a VH40 remote booster to the existing set up but I had this LJ Torana set up that seemed like a good idea.
Problem was it needed to be mounted about 3 inches to the left, which made the linkages from the pedal "difficult".

Picture shows the brakes Master cylinder mocked up where it needed to go for the Torana linkages to function. This effectively blocking the place where the clutch master cylinder needed to be.

So walked away for a while and came back and looked at the issue from a different angle and realised that if I put the brake system where the clutch master cylinder is presently located and moved the clutch to the other side of the steering column then everything would fit and work.
Not an original idea as this is what the Minx, Gazelle and Rapier have done since 1955.
Cut out a piece of metal and marked out the needed holes to better visualise  the mounting arrangement needed, used the mount positions on my Minx as a guide..

There seemed to be adequate room so had a look at what pedals I had available to keep the foot end in the right place.

These are the Vogue pedals aligned on the template.

This shows the Minx clutch pedal added to the mix.

Now being clever this shows the Vogue brake pedal slid sideways to align with the clutch master.

The pedals are actually the same length, the Minx mount is not sitting flat :-)

After posting the picture I realised that the push rod does not line up properly with the master cylinder. A slight machining of the boss could fix it or a complete new pedal. I have a selection with different left and right offsets from the pivot point. The result is the pedals are about 1" to the left from the original mounting which I think will not even be noticed from the drivers seat.

The Minx clutch pedal will need to go back in the Minx, but it will now be a simple engineering exercise to fabricate a suitable bracket to mount the pedals in this desired location with the clutch and brake master cylinders in the new orientation.

Further measurement revealed that I may be able to avoid the Torana bell crank arrangement and mount the power booster  and new master cylinder directly in line with the push rod. 

This will have the advantage that it should then be easier to run the air intake and air cleaner for the little V6 

After playing around with all the options it became apparent that I could not effectively utilise the original clutch/brake pedal assembly. The reason being that the offset of the pedals is incorrect to simply slide the brake pedal to the other side, the master cylinder push rod does not line up and the U section pedals do not lend themselves to being easily adjusted to move the pedal end sideways to the desired location.

So I knocked up a couple of test pieces to try  for fit. In a perfect world with everything straight and square it would be simple to measure, make and install. But our car bodies are cunningly shaped to accommodate all sorts of items and have protrusions that allow this. In the case of the desired clutch pedal location the heater blower fan recess intrudes in the top left part of this picture.

For the purpose of this picture I have included the lower pedals in the stock location  and the two replacements showing the final alignment, The 30mm move to the left will not be noticed from the drivers seat. Certainly much better than the pedal positions in Alfa Romeo that are heavily offset and are only suitable for those wearing size six shoes.

The clutch mount required a fair amount of metal to be removed to fit as well as a slight reshape to the fan recess. In retrospect using the automatic box from a donor Triton would have avoided all this drama :-)  It is just difficult to get the gear shift points right as the computer thinks it is a little pick up not a lightweight  (1100kg) saloon.

Moving the brake master to the left would allow the booster and master cylinder to be mounted at the same level and forward, simplifying the installation. However looking slightly ahead for the unexpected consequences of mounting it here  I would be unable to use the original Mitsubishi air intake and air cleaner as I had intended.

Edit: The wood block is just to hold it up and will be deleted in the final assembly :-)

 So back to the original thought with the assembly mounted as shown, using the Torana parts.
The Clutch master cylinder in its new location clears everything nicely.
Now to go back and make the final brackets required to bolt it all together.
It seems a good idea to incorporate a little extra stiffness into the whole assembly as the two separate pedal assemblies mounted in the series Minx body seem to have some extra bracing in the firewall area.

Knowing the silly prices Holden parts go for these days I have also considered making a copy of the Torana bell crank and bracket for this job and selling the original parts. It will need  some modifications to attach it in any case.     It all helps making it affordable.
I had also considered using a smaller Jap car booster and master cylinder.
The disc/drum set up on the Vogue is a fairly standard arrangement.

13th July

One should never get complacent about what I termed a simple exercise.
Using 4 x 2 inch RHS as a basis  (Same stuff I used for the pedal box) I made a mount for the bell crank pivot  attaching two pieces of 1.5" angle to it for the booster mount. Clamp the parts together and mount the booster in place. Immediately it was apparent why GM Holden made the mount in such a strange shape. The boot over the booster pushrod has insufficient clearance, There was also the issue I noticed when drawing up the plan that the Torana mount has a 10 degree down tilt. The reason for this is unknown, my guess is that the original brake M/C mount had an upward tilt.
In any case I will replicate the the same mount alignment as the original in the Vogue, that is the booster mount will be parallel to the vertical alignment of the original M/C

So made a better cardboard version as it was easier to modify. It did have some difficulty holding up the booster assembly 

Will attach some extra bits to provide a top bolt mount to the fire wall to stiffen it up a bit. That will be as far up as I can go on the left side. This way I can attach "bits" with hot glue to fit around all the inconvenient bits of car that get in the way,
The metal bit is the part that hold the rubber boot in place which also is the mount bolt locations.
My original metal mount was fashioned out of 4mm 100 x 50 RHS. The booster needing to be an inch further out . This was to be achieved by adding two pieces of  40mm angle. I had clamped these in place to the RHS and drilled them. 

The result was too tight around the protective boot. The RHS is 4 x 2inches outside. The original Torana part 2" inside but is tapered out to 2.5"  in two planes so that the final mount had two parts bent over at 90 degrees that wound up parallel and at the angle that Holden decided fitted the Torana. If the mount on the car is vertical this would be 10 degrees nose down.
I can only assume that the  non power Torana M/C was 10 degrees nose up. ???

In any case I will set the new M/C level, that is in the same horizontal alignment as the original Vogue item.
This makes sense too me and also makes it easier to make a jig to weld the new front piece on to the part I already had made as the parts will be parallel and 5" apart. A simple job to set the parts up to weld together.

So I cut the front out of my RHS, bolted some spacers  through the pivot point with a solid bolt and gently adjusted the open end wider The top parts need to be around 2.5" apart. Some extra bits of steel will be welded to attach the booster mount so that it is the required 5" out from the original M/C mount. I will also add an additional braced mount to the top right of the assembly as the fire wall flexes slightly. The internal pedal mount will mirror this so that the load on the fire wall is spread over a slightly wider area. These are parts we do not want breaking in service.

More pictures later.

25th July 2022

Many diagrams drawn out as in this picture

But the isue always comes back to clearances around the asembly and the travel required.
My drawings allowed for 1 5/8" (40mm) travel of the push rod and I worked on getting this same travel at the push rod into the booster.

A piece of 3mm steel was cut out and bent up ....

This bracket reproduced the Torana item with body attachments to suit the Vogue.
I attached the booster and master cylinde and installed it in the car.

The little man with the camera took some underbonnet pictures and revealed a lack of clearance between the booster body and the bonnet. 

So afte an Oh Damn moment or two I decided to try it mounted lower by simply attaching a couple of sheet metal brackets to my original unsuccessful mount. This cleared everything nicely and it seemed that it would work. So I re-engineered the now redundant "too high" mount to sit the booster 2" lower as I had tested. I had already made an assembly jig so cutting and welding  it to suit was fairly simple.