Verne Simons
Senior Editor, Jp
Photographers:
Christian HazelTrenton McGee
Brakes are very important, and for more reasons than our recurring nightmare where we are hurtling down the road in a car with no brakes. Many Jeeps, old and new, could use a little help when it comes to stopping especially after the addition of larger, heavier, more aggressive tires and wheels. You can toss larger discs, calipers, and master cylinders at your Jeep but that won’t necessarily make your Jeep stop any faster. Most stock master cylinders can handle some increase in caliper and or wheel cylinder size, but there is a limit to what stock components can handle. Combining the proper components with respect to fluid volume, pressure, and brake size is what you and we need.
When the brakes on our custom ’49 CJ-3A started acting funny, we quickly placed a call in to Wilwood Disc Brakes. The folks at Wilwood know a thing or two about high-performance stoppage and can provide almost all the components that you need to make your Jeep stop on a dime. Follow along as we update our brakes to get our old flattie stopping with the best again.
Here we have most of the components we are gonna use to get our Jeep’s braking system back up to par and more. The slim 1-inch-bore Tandem Remote Master Cylinder (PN 260-7563) with remote reservoirs and hose is the heart of the system. We also got a knob-type proportioning valve (PN 260-11179). Once installed, our system will be filled with Wilwood Hi-Temp 570 Racing Brake Fluid (PN 290-0632 for one 12oz can). We used about three 12oz bottles. Also note the red 10-lb residual pressure valve (PN 260-3279) we’ll talk more about that in a bit.
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