I hate making brake lines. A tutorial in how to not do it.

It finally happened to me. That dreaded day I think and believe everyone hates, came to my home last Saturday night/Sunday morning. I, in an attempt to miss Bambi's mom, I lost nearly all braking force/action. Joyful.

Anyways, after missing Bambi's mom, I ended up with a Christmas tree dashboard:

After limping it home, I got the low down when the sun came back out:

Now the joy starts....I had to start somewhere. So, I dug out stuff that I already had, kind of:

Well I didn't have the double flare tool, which that version is berkeleying awesome, so the parts store nabbed me for $57 for the tool and another $6 in fittings.....

After taking the rack down to have some working room for the line going to the passenger side, I ended up here at the end of day 1:

Fast forward to day 3(!).... I skipped day 2 because it was actually uneventful until this line decided to be a bitch...

That is the passenger side line that didn't want to go back in place. But HA! I got the last laugh!

Used up some brake fluid I had laying around:

Yes, the illegal blue colored stuff.

Ignore the washed out flash, but how the other two lines look:

And it's back to driving condition.... I'm going to drink some beer now. And if anyone needs a brake line made, don't call me unless you want a bullet hole in your body.

Brake lines. Almost as much fun as exhaust pipes.

I'm doing Dr.Linda's Europa now. I did one fitting last night. It took me an hour. I'm not particularly fond of them either. I've seen pics of the Eastwood tool, which is only 4x what the parts store nabbed you on that little thing. I'm almost done now, but I can see where that would be well worth the time and trouble.

I he hydraulic mastercool flaring kit, and a good tubing bender. brake lines no longer make me want to murder innocent kittens, but I think id still rather put my nuts in a vice and smack my hootus with a hammer.

I will NEVER use a bar style flaring tool again, unless theyre holding my daughter at gunpoint. if you need to do more than one set, buy the mastercool kit. honestly the best 250 ive EVER spent on a tool.

In the first picture, is the gear indicator working ok?

Love my Mastercool flaring tool. I fear no lines! Get the one with the AN adapters, Saginaw adapters, and GM fuel line adapters and you can fix pretty much anything. Makes perfect straight flares in everything, easy to work with the line on the car (to cut out a rusty section), and easy on the hands.

I completely redid the brake, steering, and fuel lines in my friends Galant VR4 with stainless steel. Took a whole weekend and made a million flares. The end result was far better than I expected. The Mastercool kit gets 100% credit for the success.

And lets not forget the importance of the metal the line is made of. Cunifer is so much easier to work with than the more common and cheaper steel lines.

Slippery wrote: In the first picture, is the gear indicator working ok?

It's in drive just fine..... The string broke for the indictor. Or I have like a 1.9x rear gear.

foxtrapper wrote: And lets not forget the importance of the metal the line is made of. Cunifer is so much easier to work with than the more common and cheaper steel lines.

I used the stuff Mopar sells for when they quit making prevent lines.

Fedhillbrakes.com

A while back I bent brake lines for a car i was building. I decided to use all AN 3 Fittings which were actually pretty easy to work with. I used a Parker Hannifin AN flareing tool which after a few practice flares made perfect flares. The maddening part to me was making the tubing bends even though I had purchased a really nice compound bending tool. I found it fairly easy after some practice to make good looking bends that fit the areas I wanted it to go. The problem was trying to make duplicate bends for the same area on the other side. I finally come to the conclusion bending brake lines so they look uniform and nice is as much an art as it is a science. Of course it doesn't help that I am somewhat anal doing these type jobs.

pirate wrote: Of course it doesn't help that I am somewhat anal doing these type jobs.

the key here, for a daily or winter beater or whatever that nobody really looks under, is not not give a E36 M3 about how they look. just as long as it connects A to B and won't chafe on anything, i'm good.

i only bust out the bender and other assorted bending tricks to make pretty lines on stuff i care about the aesthetics of.

I actually really like bending brake line. I guess it appeals to my OCD tendencies. Living in Michigan I get to do them just about any time I look at a brake fitting.

I've gotten pretty good at bending brake lines around the neck of a beer bottle.

I have the eastwood flaring tool and a bunch of snap on benders and whatnot. I quite enjoy making brake lines. The caveat is the car has to be on a lift and you have to take your time.

Cleaner than a clean thing

Can't wait til I have the time to redo the Falcon. There are a lot of improvements to be made.

Slippery wrote: In the first picture, is the gear indicator working ok?

70+ mph at ~2k rpm … in 1st gear

wbjones wrote:

Slippery wrote: In the first picture, is the gear indicator working ok?

70+ mph at ~2k rpm … in 1st gear

Actually, only 60. Remember I only have rear drums to stop with now.

I actually don't mind using bar style flare tool, but I got to use the eastwood tool and bending pliers a few weeks ago, and it's pretty bad ass.

If you only have to make one or two, get the cheap stuff from autozone. If you have to do a whole car, get this: And these:

I have that same flare tool - it sucks

Ranger50 wrote:

wbjones wrote:

Slippery wrote: In the first picture, is the gear indicator working ok?

70+ mph at ~2k rpm … in 1st gear

Actually, only 60. Remember I only have rear drums to stop with now.

my bad …. didn't have my glasses on … the blurred numbers looked like 80 was straight up … with glasses I could tell I'd mis-read the dial

I also have to say this was "only" a 16 beer repair job.... It easily could have been more.

has been for yrs … (FL may have been the only state that enforced it)

google this …. " ate blue banned "

many pages of forum links to choose from ( I'm sure there's one on here, just I can't make the search function work)

16vCorey wrote:

You know, they can picture it that way all they want. How often does it actually end up looking that cleanly bent?

iadr wrote: Since when is ATE blue illegal?

When the feds finally enforced their own rules on specific colors for specific fluids.

K, I'm ready to pop on the Mastercool MSC71475 tool, not because I need it right now but because yunz guys brought this up and I have OT money in my pocket. Will report back later.

btw, Ridgid and Imperial make some of the best tubing benders.