N600 Master Cylinder Swap for '83 Honda Civic

Diving deeper into my brake problem, I decided to gather more feedback from previous postings on the 2CylinderHondas Yahoo! Group.  I read a post about a compatible master cylinder from a 1983 Honda Civic that would mount in place of the N600 and bypass the brake booster.  Normally, I would shy away from doing any sort of unauthentic or replacement modification, however, after considering the cost and lack of available parts, I thought that going down the path of modernizing a crucial component of this N600 with another Honda parts would seem to be the best route for my situation.  I want to drive this car!  When parts start failing and their replacements are far from obtaining, a swap just sounds great!

Unfortunately, the posts only led me to understand that this process had been done, but left no concrete details or descriptions of what needed to be done in order to make this happen.  That's where this blog post comes in.  See below for pictures and information on parts that I used.

I removed the old master cylinder and cleaned around the mounting area.  The larger hole had a bunch of crystallized chunks of brake fluid, so I tried my best to remove them by vacuuming and using an air compressor to clear the area.  Also, I used some WD-40 to lube up the threads so that remounting would be simpler and less of a struggle.

Lining up the new master cylinder (information found here), I saw that the mounting holes didn't line up.  Also, the center ring was just a hair too large so it too needed some sight modding.  So, out came the dremel to expand the mounting holes and to reduce the center ring.

Since it is aluminum, the master cylinder was easily modified with only slight work.

Finished product. Next, I used the dremel to widen the mounting holes by grinding away towards the center.  New holes didn't need to be drilled because they were only a few millimeters difference.

After finding modern threaded brake nuts to be inserted into the new cylinder, I had to flare the brake lines.  Then I reworked the routing of the brake lines toward the mounting points on the new cylinder.

To install the brake fluid reservoir, I had to use the dremel tool again to cut away and make room for the cap.  Again, very minor work.

 Here's a final shot with the newly mounted brake master cylinder for a 1983 Honda Civic in a 1972 Honda N600.  After this pic, I filled it with Dot 5 brake fluid, bled the brakes and was off and running again.  I honestly didn't notice a dramatic difference with the absence of the brake booster.  However, I believe I was operating with a less than perfect booster (see former post).  I am very happy to have this work done.  Thanks for reading.  I'd be curious to see if anyone else has attempted this.