Ya see Berman. Even among the TR owners it's terribly misunderstood, and maligned constantly.
Too expensive this
will always fail that
etc. etc.
The truth of the matter is, if it's properly maintained (very damn few are) it'll give you years of great brake performance. The only part on the system that does fail what seems like every 4-5 years is the accumulator, and that's a relatively inexpensive part to replace and can be done at home in less than a couple of minutes.
However, once the brake light starts flashing (the first warning of an impending accumulator failure), I'm sorry to say there are a great many TR owners that either choose to ignore the warning sign or just flat don't know what it means. I can't even remember anymore the number of guys I've heard say "my brake light has been flashing for the last few weeks, and now the pedal is getting hard, what's going on?" OMG, your just now worrying about it? No wonder such failures seem so common. Let the accumulator fail completely, and it will very very quickly turn into a massive Powermaster failure that will be expensive. 99% of the total Powermaster failures that do occur are a direct result of an accumulator failure that wasn't taken care of in a timely manner.
On rare occasions, the pressure switch may fail (I've had one switch failure between two cars in the last 15 years).
I do have to replace an accumulator about every 4-6 years, which is no real big deal.
I personally love the performance that I get from the PM! And despite what some people would like you to believe it will hold a LOT more boost on the line than the vacuum conversions will.
You'll see that as a common complaint on a lot of threads. (Why can't I hold as much boost against the brakes now that I'm on a vacuum system??). Easy answer, line pressure! You can only make so much with vacuum brakes, period.
Don't worry about your PM. Keep it healthy, and it will give you many many years of trouble free service. Both my GN's (86 and 87) are still on their original Powermasters.
Abuse or neglect it, and it will fail you, as it has many others.
Granted, the present owners "may not" have abused it, but likely the previous owner(s) did.
I know I'm gonna get flamed for this and people are gonna say I didn't install them correctly and so on, but I tried vacuum brakes once and while they were great on the street they sucked for holding boost at the line when racing so I switched back.
