Brake/Clutch Pedal-Box Rebuild Info

The pedal box is back in. Whoever said this was about the hardest job wasn't kidding. After it was in I looked at the Frunk and see that the rubber grommet came up on one side. To my eye there's pressure on the hose from the sheet metal. I see some pressure lines where it sat as I was pulling them tighter and getting the box on. It's way too tight a fit to force the grommet back in. Do you think I need to worry about the sheet metal cutting through the hose? Has anyone needed to enlarge the hole?

hoses through frunk.jpg
 
Michael Oxman said:
The pedal box is back in. Whoever said this was about the hardest job wasn't kidding. After it was in I looked at the Frunk and see that the rubber grommet came up on one side. To my eye there's pressure on the hose from the sheet metal. I see some pressure lines where it sat as I was pulling them tighter and getting the box on. It's way too tight a fit to force the grommet back in. Do you think I need to worry about the sheet metal cutting through the hose? Has anyone needed to enlarge the hole?

View attachment 30776
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If and when I have to re-do the speedo cable and/or the hydraulic reservoir hoses, I would seriously look into adding another hole in the scuttle wall just for the speedo cable sheath. That would free up a little more space in the original factory hole for the hoses, plus it would divorce a speedo cable sheath replacement job from having to drop the pedal box and its attendant futzing with the fluid hoses. I would make sure the additional hole was high enough on the scuttle to preclude water entry into the frunk and take care to line up the hole to allow for smooth sheath bends, and install a suitable sealing grommet.
 
Michael Oxman said:
The pedal box is back in. Whoever said this was about the hardest job wasn't kidding. After it was in I looked at the Frunk and see that the rubber grommet came up on one side. To my eye there's pressure on the hose from the sheet metal. I see some pressure lines where it sat as I was pulling them tighter and getting the box on. It's way too tight a fit to force the grommet back in. Do you think I need to worry about the sheet metal cutting through the hose? Has anyone needed to enlarge the hole?

View attachment 30776
Click to expand...

Michael, if your pedal box is already back in, you didn't had much problems. It took me a lot longer to do it.

About the hoses thru the bulkead:
1) yes, it is hard to put the grommet back in. Some wd-40 and pushing, prying with the tip of a screwdriver made me do it
2) maybe the hoses aren't in the right place. Here is a pic of mine. BTW, I had to do it twice. First time, I tried to fit the clutch hose in the same hole...

20200411_181700.jpg
 
DanielForest said:
Michael, if your pedal box is already back in, you didn't had much problems. It took me a lot longer to do it.

About the hoses thru the bulkead:
1) yes, it is hard to put the grommet back in. Some wd-40 and pushing, prying with the tip of a screwdriver made me do it
2) maybe the hoses aren't in the right place. Here is a pic of mine. BTW, I had to do it twice. First time, I tried to fit the clutch hose in the same hole...

View attachment 30780
Click to expand...
Daniel - Great suggestion!! Grommet is in!! When you did yours, did you have any problems reinstalling the hard lines? The two on the brake side went in fine as did the one on the clutch cylinder front, but the line to the silver "box" on the clutch side isn't even close. I wonder if I bent it when I removed it. I think I'll buy a bending tool and see if I can reroute it. Thanks again for the wd-40/screwdriver. I never would have believed there was room for it.
 
I had a hard time putting back the pedal box.
I had a hard time bolting the fitting of the hard lines.
I had a hard time bolting the pedal box to the floor.

I would say your problem maybe the routing (hard line bent when removing or when pushing the pedal box back in). When I was really close, my difficulty was to get the fitting to bolt without cross-threading.
 
I think I cross threaded one of the hard lines. I did not notice till the nut was all the way in that it was askew. I backed it out and tried again but it was too late so I just tightened it back up.
 
sorry to ping an old thread. I'm finally getting around to doing one (out of both on slate to do) of my X1/9s and had a question or two for veterans of this job. There was some mention of corrosion considerations putting all of the hydraulics back together. I was curious what - if anything - folks use to protect galling between the line fitting & the aluminum junctions? Everything else in their is typical steel/steel, but I would think the junctions offer some extra opportunities for stuck fittings even with everything clean.

Also, re: the comments about bench bleeding vs. I-don't-know-what. I would expect a messy job of putting the MCs/pedal box back in place full of fluid. Would a power bleeder at the reservoirs be considered a reasonable alternative to bench bleeding.

I like the allthread suggestion. I am guessing that I am more likely to want to remove it all if I have to service anything in the MC/box area, but I may need to re-think that position before I finalize the job I'm (stalled for other reasons) in the middle of today.

thanks for the space!
 
Fiataccompli said:
I was curious what - if anything - folks use to protect galling between the line fitting & the aluminum junctions?
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Antiseize... not much, and keep it on the male threads.
Also, re: the comments about bench bleeding vs. I-don't-know-what. I would expect a messy job of putting the MCs/pedal box back in place full of fluid. Would a power bleeder at the reservoirs be considered a reasonable alternative to bench bleeding.
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Yes. I’ve never found bench bleeding to be worth the trouble. For years I used a pressure bleeder, but have since found that gravity bleeding (easiest but slow) and reverse bleeding (pump the system full through the caliper bleeders, fast and easy if you have the right equipment) work better. In any case, your goal is to get the system close enough to full that you can use the traditional pedal pumping method (two-person or speedbleeder or other check valve) method to finish the job.
 
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EricH said:
I’ve never found bench bleeding to be worth the trouble.
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I've not tried bench bleeding the X's masters, seems like the potential for a huge mess while wrestling them back in the car. For those that have successfully done it, what process did you follow to get them back in without getting fluid everywhere?
 
Well, interesting. I have heard of simply drawing fluid into the MCs prior to installation as well, though for argument's sake, that could be done w/ everything but the output hard lines in place & (knowing my luck) may be less prone to making a big mess. I don't know why I am even thinking much about it (other than having other stuff going on, so having long breaks between tasks where I can over-think it) because the car is NOT a nice car and I doubt the world would be even slightly different if I sprayed brake fluid all over the place :)
 
Dr.Jeff said:
The nuts that connect to aluminum components (like the square junction blocks on later models) do not seem to get stuck. They all came free easily on both cars. But the nuts that connect to steel or cast iron (like the clutch master line, or caliper lines) were all very stuck.
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This is interesting! My stock pedal box ('81) has the gold-colored aluminum cube junction blocks, and the tube nuts did indeed pop loose quite easily [EDIT: *relatively* easily, compared to getting the ones in the wheel-wells loose.]. The replacement I bought from MWB has what looks to be cast iron blocks.

On the other hand, I know my system was full of extremely bad brake fluid for a couple of decades. Given that downside, would the upside of the aluminum block make it worth swapping out the blocks while I have both pedal boxes out of the car, do you think? Or is a generous coating of anti-seize sufficient to allay the rusty-nut concern?
 
I'm not sure if the blocks being aluminum made the difference or not. I just noticed a difference in how frozen they were when I did mine. But there could be something to it, different metals and corrosion. However I think good use of anti-seize should be all that's needed.
 
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