914 Master Cylinder - question? Options

[TRP]

Hey Gang!

So, if you've been following my build notes/thread on the forum here, you may know that I was waffling back and forth on changing my master cylinder. The brake pedal never felt right from the day I picked it up on August 7th of this year. The pedal felt weak and I'd need to pump the brakes a few times to get a firm-ish pedal. Even with that, it never felt confidence inspiring

I tried bleeding the system 2 times with my motive power bleeder, and it got a little better but still not good enough. I had a few serious pucker moments in traffic where I though I was going to eat the car in front of me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/barf.gif)

I was on the fence between trying to bleed them again or just swapping out the entire MC. Well, today I bit the bullet and did the swap. Everything went very easily because I had the tank out and everything already taken apart for the fuel line swap, sway bar install, and steering rack bellow replacement. In for a penny, in for a pound... right?

One thing I noticed when I pulled the existing MC out of the car, they previous owner didn't install the little silver washers into the inlet bores of the MC. He just had the rubber grommets/metal lines jammed in there. Could this have been part of the issue I was having with a weak pedal?

I installed the new 19mm MC with the silver washers in there and I am working on getting the system all blead nicely. So far everything is going well, I have already blead out about half of a big bottle of DOT4. I'm letting everything settle a bit and I'll go for one or two more rounds before I have my wife help with the final foot pump/open the bleeders dance.

Just wondering what you guys think about the necessity of those silver washers.

Thanks
Ted