Brake master cylinder

[Matra_Hans]

Hi
My Rancho has now been on the road for 2 ¾ years in its second life. The original brake master cylinder gave up after a few months and a new from Simon was installed. But earlier this year the new master cylinder stopped working. I complained to Simon (to no avail) and ordered once again a new master cylinder. However no more master cylinders for the Ranch are available!
During my holiday back in Denmark I searched through my store of spares and located 3 Rancho master cylinders, and I fitted the “best looking” in the Rancho and it is working fine.

But having a not functioning and almost new master was nagging me and I was also thinking of the next time I needed a new master cylinder and non will be available. So I took the almost new master cylinder apart, and one of the rubber seals had disintegrated. I took the piston and the rubber seal in my pocket to the Biltema spare part store which is self serviced. The shop had repair sets for the brake master cylinder for only 4 different cars, so I opened the different boxes and tried if I could find any rubber seal of the same dimension as the one from the Rancho. One of the rubber seals for a Mercedes had the correct dimensions. In total there are 5 identical rubber seals in the Rancho master cylinder and there are three in the repair set for the Mercedes, however I only changed the one damaged seal.

The Mercedes models in question are 190 W201 83-90, 200 123-series 76-85 and 200 W124 85-93. For the few Rancho owners in Scandinavia the Biltema part number is 66-708.

The price for the repair set is 6.50 Euro while a master cylinder which Simon was able to get from a French workshop (but it newer arrived) would had been 275.00 Euro

Regards Hans

[Anders Dinsen]

That's a very nice tip, Hans. Off topic, last year I also found a repair kit with new seals for the Murena 2.2 clutch master cylinder in Biltema. Price compared to a new cylinder was about the same as you have experienced. I like Biltema's concept, and their products are usually in good quality.

- Anders