what brake boosters work

ideally it sounds like an 11 inch booster is the best but what are the differences and which ones fit our cars

id go with the astro van hydroboost swap honestly

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/ccrp_1105_chevy_astro_van_hydroboost_salvage/index.html

i plan on doing it on on my car whenever i finally get time to hit the junkyards again

im not swapping my steer box i just put that thing in and when those things start to leak forget about it

im going to be upgrading my box pretty soon anyways, and yeah it does suck when they leak, im just going to pull two and have an extra ready to go when one fails

That hydro-boost would help with the close clearance I have in my Elco project. The left rocker (valve) cover is only 5/8" from my booster.
And not only the Elco, but my old '85 Caddy beater has crappy brakes, even with all new parts in the system. It needs something drastic, and that set-up looks like the answer.....

The 11 inch seems to be the most common for '73 to '77 GM..

i think hydroboost is the way to go man, so what if it leaks? thats what they make degreaser and pressure washers for. i can run whatever cam i want and not worry about brakes being effected..and yeah the clearance helps too like Pila said, although i have no problem with that currently

1,000 dollar price tag no thanks ill work my leg out and go manual brakes before i do that

If the engine stops turning, you have no power brakes.
At least with a vacuum booster, you get a couple pumps when the engine is cut off.

Why reinvent the wheel?

It isn't like your braking stopping distance is better.
And do you really want to use engine power for an easy brake pedal?

Thanks -

good points, but i still stand by my point, i dont care about engine power too much personally, my motor has plenty of get up and go and honestly how much power is it really going to "rob" me of? not enough to notice.

That's the great thing about hot rodding, you can do what you want.

If you look on new trucks, they are going to electric vacuum pumps for brakes... no longer hydro...

I run an 11" vac booster and a canister to cover the camshaft.

It's simple and it's worked forever.

Thanks -

I run manual brakes and steering on my car, but its not something you would want to use as a daily driver

How bad is manual steering on our cars? I got a manual box to swap on, just contemplating whether or not it's worth the hassle. FWIW, I have dealt with manual steering on an older A Body & it wasn't too bad. Got a good workout trying to park, but nothing too major.

With manual steering, less caster and narrow front tires will make it easier to steer at low speed.

In a newer car, they are almost impossible to drive w/o power assist because of the amount of caster added to self-align the front wheels straight with little or no effort (for our driving safety).

Also depends on scrub radius in the front suspension as to the amount of effort involved. Wide wheels with big offsets in the front wheels will also make it a monster to parallel park.

Manual steering could be done with slight alignment changes and narrow front tires with zero offset wheels.

But the original question was brakes...

LoL, yeah I know. Sorry about pirating the thread Billy-Ray. Just wondered how much worse a G3 was than a G2.

IMHO as far as brakes go, our cars are good enough from the factory if you get the larger rear drums from a 76-77 car & slap on a set of good pads up front. If you are running too big of a cam to run power brakes, then Jerry has the right idea with a reserve canister.

Didn't the Olds diesel powered cars have some sort of belt driven vacuum set up? Could be an idea if you run across one in the salvage yard.