Tripple Reservoir?

[VIRGIN MIKE]

In my sixty sears of driving mostly sticks and all but one with hydraulic brakes, I have never had a catastrophic hydraulic failure; lot of leaky ones but no failures. So, it seems to me, the one reservoir / master is like having one spare for each tire - would it totally irresponsible to have only one reservoir?
firewall.jpg

[Papa]

I think there has been quite a bit of debate on the issue of splitting the brakes into two separate circuits given the balance bar setup on these cars. My thoughts on the matter when building my car were, "It certainly can't hurt". I think for the clutch, I would argue that it should be on it's own reservoir, but can't offer any objective explanation as to why it has to be other than volume, which can be addressed with a larger reservoir. I'm sure you'll get lots of opinions.

[VIRGIN MIKE]

Please see my latter post I accidentally posted this mid thought

[egchewy79]

because of the balance bar, the double/triple reservoir won't necessarily maintain stopping power to either the front or the rear brakes if one of the lines happens to fail, as I initially believed. For example, if you lose pressure in your front brakes, the balance bar will preferentially apply pressure to the side with less resistance (front) and prevent rears from locking up even with increased pressure applied. I found this out when changing a leaky rear caliper and didn't completely bleed all the air out. I had a very firm pedal feel before swapping out the caliper, and after (with a few bubbles left in the system), the entire brake feel was very spongy despite the fact that my front brakes were untouched. I rebled the rear caliper again and regained a firm pedal.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong in this thinking.

[GoDadGo]

I found this out after helping a friend with a major braking issue.
My pal Heath lost pressure in the rear and was running a single reservoir and this caused a near-complete failure.
Because the two MC's were daisy-chained together, the air entered the Rear MC and made it's way over to the Front AC.
Please know that I didn't figure it out on my own and had to make a quick call to Henry Renard (65 Cobra Dude) who gave us the knowledge we needed to correct the issue.

Running individual reservoirs will keep Master Cylinders isolated thus reducing the chance of failure since the plumbing systems are separated.
I'm running a Tilton Triple Reservoir in Redbone and have the largest feeding the Front MC, medium feeding the Rear MC, with the smallest feeding my Clutch MC.
Shown below is the unit that I'm using:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/til-72-576

Hope This Helps!

[FFinisher]

because of the balance bar, the double/triple reservoir won't necessarily maintain stopping power to either the front or the rear brakes if one of the lines happens to fail, as I initially believed. For example, if you lose pressure in your front brakes, the balance bar will preferentially apply pressure to the side with less resistance (front) and prevent rears from locking up even with increased pressure applied. I found this out when changing a leaky rear caliper and didn't completely bleed all the air out. I had a very firm pedal feel before swapping out the caliper, and after (with a few bubbles left in the system), the entire brake feel was very spongy despite the fact that my front brakes were untouched. I rebled the rear caliper again and regained a firm pedal.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong in this thinking.

Correct.

Only catch is that the third is usually for the clutch which would not be effected by a brake failure.

To answer you question more directly I don't think it would be totally irresponsible to have 1 For the brakes.

I would have 1 separate for the clutch though.

[totem]

because of the balance bar, the double/triple reservoir won't necessarily maintain stopping power to either the front or the rear brakes if one of the lines happens to fail, as I initially believed. For example, if you lose pressure in your front brakes, the balance bar will preferentially apply pressure to the side with less resistance (front) and prevent rears from locking up even with increased pressure applied. I found this out when changing a leaky rear caliper and didn't completely bleed all the air out. I had a very firm pedal feel before swapping out the caliper, and after (with a few bubbles left in the system), the entire brake feel was very spongy despite the fact that my front brakes were untouched. I rebled the rear caliper again and regained a firm pedal.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong in this thinking.

Incorrect. The side of the balance bar with the leak will bottom out, then force will be applied to the other side. The pedal will be low but not to the floor.

With one reservoir, If you make the Y near the reservoir, the line will hold enough volume to activate the second circuit.

[VIRGIN MIKE]

Not too worried about the clutch, if the brakes are compromised I'm not going to need the clutch before I fix the brakes (and vice versa)