No brakes

[charger69_mx]

My 1969 "General Lee" does not have very good braking.  I have doubted my intelligence and got into the mode of the dealerships and started replacing items.  After replacing the brake pads, rubber seals, master cylinder, and booster, the car still takes waaaaaay too far to stop.  I took the car to a brake shop and they could not find anything wrong except that the car did not brake properly.
Now with all of this being said, I did soup up the engine.  I have a 440 with the largest valves available, a .498 lift cam with 292 duration and the piston are at +.030.  I did have some lifter clatter so I am replacing the lifters.
I feel that I am not getting enough vaccuum from the engine.... I will see if the lifters fix it, but I doubt it.

Any suggestions before I go broke replacing possibly good parts?  Does anyone know what the vaccuum level should be for the brakes to operate properly?  I am far from an expert, but I do most of the work myself.

[resq302]

A friend of mine had a similar problem with his blown  68 Caprice.  He had to get an electric vacuum pump and storage canister to be able to have enough for his brakes.  Once he did that, the car stopped better than new.  I think Summit racing might have elecric vacuum pumps. 

[69BlackChargerRT]

I had the same problem with my stroker, however, when I rebuilt the power brake booster (twice, as the first rebuild still didn't work), it didn't leak vacuum and fixed my weak braking problem.  I will say though, that if you press the brake in, about the third time in rapid and continuous succession, you better wait for the vacuum to build back up or you won't get a good fourth press.  It doesn't take that long for it to get back to full vacuum, but I have never had to get that far in traffic.  Hope you figure it out, as it was frustrating for me to figure out what was wrong with my system.

[Brock Samson]

sounds like a vacume issue all right,..
the wilder cams will cause this, that's why i went with the stock six-pack cam and not someting alittle wilder...
here in san fran with the hills and awful traffic good brakes are probably more important then speed...

[Chryco Psycho]

a 292* duration cam will definatly have a vacuum problem , going to manual brakes is an option as well as the above listed solutions

[Nacho-RT74]

I'm not brakes expert but I can't imagine how a car brakes can fail with vacuum related stuff. I think you could feel harder or softer brakes, but allways able to brake.

[resq302]

You would be able to brake but if you lose vacuum, your power assisted brakes would work worse than what a manual brake system would.