, what is the purpose of installing a remote brake fluid reservoir? Is it merely for insuring fluid level? If you have good pedal, and check it occasionally, what is the benefit?
For me, the purpose of this is two fold.
First, it makes frequent (daily) checks much more practical. Remember that these trucks are old. Civvy vehicles would have had a LOT more brake parts installed in them. These trucks sat with DOT 5 equivalent brake fluid in them for years with open vented reservoirs. Either they were recently overhauled, or there IS corrosion inside some or all of the brake system. You don't know how much until you take it apart and start new. Most of the places that corrosion will happen involve metal to rubber sealing areas. Leaks are common. The booster design also has the unique ability to develop a leak, consume a ton of brake fluid, yet never leave a drop on the ground. Take those two items, and multiply them by the fact that it is a single outlet master cylinder, so ALL the brakes are on one circuit. Unlike modern vehicles, if you loose fluid at ANY point, you won't "loose front brakes" or "loose back brakes". The pedal simply hits the floor and you're on the roller coaster ride of your life. So in my mind, the daily (well, daily on days it's intended to be driven) checks of the fluid level are critical as an inconsistent fluid level does without fail indicate an issue developing with the brake hydraulic system.
The second reason is in the event of failure. Nearly all failures are not cleanly cut open lines, but rather a small hole developed somewhere that limits maximum pressure, and will still allow "SOME" pressure to be made for the duration of the pedal stroke. The remote reservoir in my case was made to hold just a little less than half a gallon of additional reserve fluid. That excess supply does no good until and unless there is a catastrophic failure. It's about as much as I can pump through the master cylinder during the time it takes me to downshift to a crawl and stop with the hand brake, traveling down a slight downgrade. Essentially, it extends the time that I may make use of whatever slight bit of braking may remain for a longer time than the stock reservoir, so that in the event of a failure, I have a much better chance of getting that "one last stop" out of it to get it safely to the side of the road.
These systems are not unsafe. They are simply from a different day and age, where more maintenance was accepted and expected, traffic was different, roads and speeds were different, and quite simply put, brake failures were not such a catastrophic event as they are today. As such they need more attention from the operator, and a higher level of respect than today's stuff does in order to operate in today's world.
Question two: I have about a hundred gallons of used fryer oil and 5 gallons of oil from my recent oil change. Is filtering this oil really worth the hassle to run it through as fuel? There is so much on SS about this, and it sounds very complicated and labor intensive. Is it worth the trouble?
Thoughts?
Is that ALL you have? If so, then most of the "good" filtering aparatus will be out of the question. It might be doable by a smaller scale, slower, possibly labor intensive method to get it used up. But unless the supply is ongoing, it does seem a big investment to make that stuff useable. Transferring to smaller containers (if it didn't come that way) and hand pouring through relatively inexpensive filter bags will get it done, just slowly and of course somebody's got to stand there and pour the jugs... The engine oil (A drop in the bucket I know) is a lot easier. Drain it from the engine in a CLEAN bucket, keep it CLEAN, and it can go straight in. It'll dump stuff in your stock filters, but five gallons once a year isn't going to stack up on you. It's already pretty well filtered, anything in it will be "chunkies" that probably won't make it past the pickup, but will settle to the bottom of the primary filter bowl and not bother a filter in either case. A hundred gallons of fryer oil most certainly will raise issues with the stock filters on the truck. Commercially available waste motor oil (or your own in larger volumes) will be the same, it's gonna become a maintenance nightmare keeping filters in the truck. At that level it's gotta get cleaned up very well first.
