Horrible experience with servo "restoration"

[Gary Schulz]

There is an old thread lurking about regarding the restoration of my Mk1 S servo. I took considerable expense and months of time by sending my servo to a specialist in the UK who I thought had good reviews. My experience has turned out to be a nightmare. As many of you know, I have been working on a multi-year restoration of my 1964 1275S and among the very few tasks I farmed out (actually this may be the only thing I farmed out) I sent my servo to a company in the UK. They had indicated that they could sleeve bores and re-chrome shafts as necessary to make the servo good as new so I thought this would be a good task to have experts work on.

Fast forward 4 1/2 years. I have been hunting down a very slow leak from the braking system since I got my car together. At one point I found a drip of brake fluid hanging from the bottom of the vacuum chamber housing and it also appeared that the area around the control valve diaphragm was damp. Initially I attributed this to loose brake fittings on the servo. The leak was actually pretty small but after a period of a week or so I could see the front subframe was wet from the dripping. To make a long story short, I just wound up pulling out the servo and found the following-

The control valve diaphragm was wet with brake fluid on both sides!

20200808_163049.jpg

It looks to me like the piston seal is good but the bore looks awful (hard to get detailed pictures of this but it appears pretty nasty)

20200808_164629.jpg

Also the large vacuum chamber had brake fluid on both sides of the diaphragm

20200808_165112.jpg

Not sure if I should discuss who this vendor is but I am seriously pissed! This cost significant money (a lot to do the "restoration", shipping both directions, and many months of time wasted) but of course I didn't put it to use until a few years later so couldn't see all the issues until now.
I am pretty discouraged since I have to start over with this.... What would you guys do in this situation?

[Gary Schulz]

Oh yes, here is my "reworked" piston (pushrod)

20200808_165514.jpg

[Fanfaniracing]

That looks nasty...

[Aussie Bill B]

That is truly appalling.
Definitely take it up with provider as the repairs are clearly below industry standards and do not rectify the problem. Start with "What can you do to help sort this out for me..." before moving to threats to name and shame.

I know it doesn't help your immediate situation but may be worth considering. I have had the Lockheed servo unit for my 1966 S reconditioned several years ago and rebuilt it myself from supplied parts.
Since the parts and expertise were still available in Australia for that unit, I have reconditioned/rebuilt 2 more spare servos since then. Turnaround was about 2 weeks. The first one has been back in the car for about 2 years now.

Here, the UK Lockheed booster was replaced on the production line by a locally made PBR VH44JA unit.

When my Lockheed unit was repaired, the main bore was resleeved and the air control valve was also resleeved and fitted with the piston and seal from the Australian made unit.
I replaced the chromed pushrod with a stainless steel part I made when I had access to a lathe. I have had the others machined by a local shop.
There are mini parts businesses like these, who do reconditions-on-exchange.

https://minisport.com.au/mk1-original-c ... d-exchange

There are local good brake shops who do the work, too.

[Gary Schulz]

I may have to look for a domestic source for rebuilding. I could possibly make the pushrod but it looks like it needs to have a ground finish (or better). Might be tricky to come up with that sort of surface finish. There are plenty of local places that will refinish parts like that as long as I supply accurate dimensions so I may be better off to farm it out. Would have been easier if this place had done the job correctly...

[NicholasUpton]

Gary, I have had good luck having MK1 servos rebuild here in California at Power Brake exchange. They have done 6 or 7 for me and haven’t had an issue.

[Gary Schulz]

Gary, I have had good luck having MK1 servos rebuild here in California at Power Brake exchange. They have done 6 or 7 for me and haven’t had an issue.

Good to know. Do they do sleeving of bores and handle rechroming of shafts etc?

[Exminiman]

That bore looks guaranteed to fail.....especially shocking as is a safety critical part.
In interests of safety, might be an idea to name the supplier, save others running the risk .....

[Dearg1275]

Garry,
I notice that the end of the piston rod is missing its rubber rebound buffer, there to stop the servo clacking metal to metal. I have been aware of a reconditioner simply putting together an equivalent servo from bits and returning that rather than using the components supplied. That’s fine as long as you know that’s happening. It’s worth establishing what their practice is before sending your servo. I have seen a chamber shell returned with more corrosion pitting that it had before!

D

[Gary Schulz]

Garry,
I notice that the end of the piston rod is missing its rubber rebound buffer, there to stop the servo clacking metal to metal. I have been aware of a reconditioner simply putting together an equivalent servo from bits and returning that rather than using the components supplied. That’s fine as long as you know that’s happening. It’s worth establishing what their practice is before sending your servo. I have seen a chamber shell returned with more corrosion pitting that it had before!

D

I suspect that this is what they did. I sent them the servo dismantled because I wanted to inspect the components and to be honest, some of it looks worse now. I sent them an email along with pictures and a link to this thread. I would like to give them a chance to respond before taking additional steps.

[Gary Schulz]

Gary, I have had good luck having MK1 servos rebuild here in California at Power Brake exchange. They have done 6 or 7 for me and haven’t had an issue.

Good to know. Do they do sleeving of bores and handle rechroming of shafts etc?

Did you deal with San Jose or LA? I may be taking this route.

[mk1]

First, I must say that the servo does look pretty duff & would certainly not be happy to receive something back like that.

However, due to the time delay between you purchasing / receiving your item & now, you can only rely on the suppliers good will. sadly you don't have any legal comeback whatsoever.

It is pretty obvious who the supplier is as you posted their address yesterday on another thread. All I can say is that I know of many people who have used the services of this particular company & have never heard of similar issues arising.

I sincerely hope that you get some sort of satisfaction from them, but can't help but feel that posting stuff on the internet before you have exhausted all other possibilities is possibly a bit premature.

Let us know what transpires.

[Jono]

That does look crap what a bummer

Whilst probably of no practical help given the position you're in I've always used Classic Car Automotive in Macclesfield for servo and brake rebuilds and have always found their work to be beyond reproach, so another option if you get no satisfaction from the firm you've been dealing with.

Jon

[Gary Schulz]

All good points Mark. It is less than ideal to have years in between the time work was carried out and the time the unit was actually put in service however since the unit was sitting in a dry place with plugs inserted in all the ports it seems a little hard to believe that the entire thing reverts back to the terrible condition it has been found to be in. I am not claiming to have any legal recourse. I have none. At this point I think it will be risky to even ship it all the way back to them since they could potentially hold it and claim that the unit was somehow worn out or abused so they could justify the restoration cost all over again. For the record, I have no indication that this is what they intend to do but I am trying to weigh all the possibilities and be as pragmatic as possible. I am also assuming that this was just a big mistake and perhaps someone just assembled the servo seeing that the cosmetics were done, not realizing that none of the internal work was completed. I am willing to assume none of it was intentional considering the servo couldn't possibly work in this condition.

With the exception for those who do this as a profession or at the very least a deeply obsessive hobby, I don't think it is too odd to restore pieces and then carefully store them on a shelf while you attend to other parts of the car. This has been a multi-year project for me so not sure how else I could have handled it.

In any case not sure how the insides get into this condition without being used at all! I guess I will chalk it up to another lesson learned. I should have built-up a hydraulic test set with a master and slave to verify that it was working as one would expect. I didn't think I needed to do that...

[mk1]

Hi Gary,

I totally agree with all your points, but as I said before, you are totally dependent upon their good will.

If it was me, I'd have kept my powder dry until I had totally given up on any sort of recourse from them & THEN gone public.

As I say, I know which company it is & have already removed them from the recommended suppliers page.

Good luck & keep us posted.

[Aussie Bill B]

I agree with Gary's point about long-term restorations. It could be an issue for any of us.
These boosters have not been fitted to new cars for decades, so surely a business overhauling them must consider it reasonable that the unit may not be installed for some time.
Regardless of the warranty period being expired, the repair was not completed to a satisfactory standard, as the photo of the pitted bore proves.

[nick rogers]

Sorry to hear about your experience. During the 26 years that my shop was operating we rebuilt a large number of S servos. Because of the condition of the pushrods that we encountered (peeling chrome etc) we had a bunch of stainless ones made. I still have a few if you plan to re-do it yourself.

[Gary Schulz]

Nick, I sent you a PM

[NicholasUpton]

Nick, I sent you a PM

Garry, send it again as I don’t see anything in my PM box

[colonel mustard]

Hi Gary
Have you had any feedback on this matter yet?