LJ brakes leave a lot to be desired. Like being able to stop the little sucker. Suzuki got a lot of things right when they made the LJs, but all of the competent engineers must have been on vacation when the brakes were designed. The master cylinder has a very small volume and a limited reservoir. The drum brakes are small, very soft and wear quickly. They must be kept very well adjusted or the master cylinder does not have the volume to fully apply the brakes with one pedal stroke. But we can fix this. Yes, we can.
Suzuki finally discovered what decent brakes were and put them on their SJ413 Samurai. This braking system can be used to upgrade the LJ with relative ease. At least I thought it was pretty easy. Before the wheel brakes are upgraded, I believe that it is necessary to upgrade the master cylinder first. So let’s do that little project.
PARTS:
Special Tools:
That’s all I think you need other than your standard hand tools, So let’s get started.
There’s the old master cylinder. What a mess. Looks hard to get to.
Well, get everything out of the way so we can work on it. That’s much better
The first thing we need to do is get under the dash and remove the clevis pin that holds the push rod to the brake pedal. Just take out the cotter pin and it should come out easily.
Now we need to use that dandy little brake line wrench and take the brake line off the master cylinder. OOPS! Dangit. Just my luck. Now I need TWO 40” pieces of 3/16” brake line. Oh well, we’ll deal with that later.
Now we take out the two bolts holding the master cylinder to the firewall. 12mm wrench. Don’t curse too loud, you’ll wake up the mice living under the seat.
Now it’s time to get the SJ413 master cylinder prepared. I hope yours is in better shape than mine was.
Got to get it off of that booster. Take off the two nuts and gently lift it off. Yeah, right. It took two screwdrivers and a little work to get mine off.
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