Brakes from hell

[XXL]

I've been battling "bad brakes" on the Wallet Eater for years. The various issues I've had may not actually be related, but it feels like there's a fundamental problem somewhere. I don't drive the truck much (less than 1500 per year on average), but have recently been driving it more.

Some background-- the truck is a '69 that I converted to 73+ disc/71-72 drums on the rear (axle swap). Over the years, I have replaced EVERYTHING. Let me repeat that... E V E R Y T H I N G . A few years ago, I moved to Kugel underdash brake setup, and went with a Corvette (C4, IIRC) remote reservoir master, 7" dual diaphragm booster, and billet remote reservoir. What I recently learned is that, apparently, during that swap, the shop doing the work "disappeared" my stock 73+ prop valve... because it sure ain't there now .

The original problem was that I couldn't keep pedal pressure without a few pumps, but 4 or more bleedings-- bench, 2-man, and pressure bleeding never solved the issue. At the advise of a shop that is now (not necessarily because of this issue) on my feces list, we swapped out the 7/8" Corvette remote reservoir setup for a 73+ 1 1/8" local reservoir unit. That's been on the truck for about 9 months, and I've come to love with mediocre brakes.

However, recently, while rockrln was doing some work on the truck, the right front caliper decided to freeze up. It froze in a "touching" state, and so it didn't stop the truck from rolling, but at speed, because of the friction, caused a pretty bad wobble. Note: this came out of nowhere, and I secretly believe Kevin used the truck in a local demolition derby one weekend, thus causing the issue *i keed, i keed*. He replaced the caliper and all is back to mediocrity. Kevin described it as "fluid, but no pressure" coming out of the calipers when he bled them after the swap. That's a pretty good descriptor for the performance of the mediocre brakes. I'd have to stand every ounce of my weight to get the back brakes to lock up, and even then, I don't think they would. But it may well be that the back brakes are the only ones slowing me down. That would explain the mediocre performance and possibly the locked up caliper that really just stuck in position due to non-use, and then got hot from the friction, where it locked up for real.

So, I've got fluid (and no air) coming out of the front, so the pedal is pushing the mc, which is pushing fluid to the calipers. And multiple mc's haven't changed this fact... why am I not getting pressure?

Discuss.