Brake Master Cylinders

[CriticalMass]

Quite the assumptions you've made there, RallySnake.

Given that this car was home built three decades ago and ERA has nothing to do with the components pictured (short of the bracket placement), Bob isn't going to do anything to correct it, nor should he (and their MC setup is different on newer cars anyway). His participation in this forum is already more than I would expect from a manufacturer and is invaluable to ERA owners.

I'm no car mechanic, but I do have a mechanical/structural engineering degree with extensive industry experience in metallurgy/material properties. To suggest that a fully threaded rod is insufficient for this application with absolutely no information about it is off base. As long as the threaded portion of the diameter isn't considered in the rods compression yield characteristics, it's no less appropriate than any solid rod of similar material (that's not strictly true, but the differences are minor and only come into play under 'strain to [material] failure' conditions, which aren't applicable).

The idiot who built this car was my father and I trust his work implicitly, but thanks for the kind words.

In maintaining the car, I have found Grade 9 bolts in all 'critical' applications that experience little to no shearing, and Grade 8 in the 'critical' areas that do. Nobody considers those kinds of things (and it's overkill as Grade 8 would have been more than enough everywhere) and then puts a hardware store grade threaded rod into the brake system (and I can see from inspection that it is a high strength steel variety).

However, using a steel component manufactured to a specific strength standard is no guarantee of anything. There can always be undetected defects which could cause failure.

I have seen welds on nuclear power plant components that were fully engineered and certified through x-ray inspection fail. I've seen fasteners and structural links constructed to the highest standards for applications with exceptionally high safety factors also fail...but maybe it was just that the guys who engineered it were idiots.