advice on full brake line replacement

[toycar]

Hello


Looking for any advice for the novice brake line bender? I have never in my life done anything with brake lines aside from patching a bad line. Very comfortable with my double flare skills, but, aside from that I am a noob at brake line repair.

My lines are all completely shot. I mean I have brakes, but, 2/4 have holes and the remaining lines are rotten. 3/16 line is probably 5/8 in diameter from all the corrosion and shit that is built up.


Anyways, where do you guys source your fittings? How do you know what size fittings for all of the random shit you have to plumb? What about thread pitch, is that a standard deal or do I need to be aware of odd ball thread pitch crap when doing this?


Anyone remove ABS on an OBD2 car? Thinking it would be a lot easier, but, not sure if the electronics will be happy if I just remove everything. Thoughts or advice?

Car is a CD5 accord.

Thanks!

[foamypirate]

My advice would be to use cunifer line (copper/nickel). It's as resistant to corrosion as stainless, bends easily by hand, and flares easily. You can get it from Fedhill (google er').

Not sure how to go about deducing the fitting types other than google searching or breaking one loose and looking at it. My guess would be metric bubble flare, but that's literally just a Wild-Assed-Guess. The fitting threads should be standard for the size of the line (1/4 vs 3/16, etc) and flare type.

[Jarrett]

The most difficult part is mocking up your bends before hand. Some people use coat hangers or softer aluminum line to get the desired shape down before moving on to the final material.

Save all of your factory lines, even if they are rotted out, as they are perfect templates for your new lines.

Buy a bender that has multiple bending radii on it, insead of the ones that have a single radius for three different sizes. They're nearly the same price. I think you can get one at Harbor Freight.

Instead of bulk line bought coiled up, go over to the parts store to check their lines. You can get an 8' line with fittings for a little over $13. If you bought three of those, you should have enough to do everything, plus cover for practice pieces and mess-ups.

Don't go for complicated bends. OEM manufacturers don't. Just go for bends that have easy angles and separate them with as much straight section as possible. If you're going to have a bend pretty soon after the flared fitting or tube nut, make sure you factor that in to your order of assembly. Once it's flared, you can't get the fitting on, and once it's bent, you can't bring the tube nut to it from the other side.

If you buy stainless line, or some other very strong metal, make sure your flaring tool candle it.

You NEED a deburring tool that can handle 3/16 of an inch. I recommend the one from Eastwood available from Jegs. On one end it has provisions to ream out the inside of the pipe, and on the other, it has provisions to debur the outside so that your flares are clean and smooth.

Those are a few points in a somewhat bulleted fashion.

[toycar]

Thanks for the tips.

I bought a tool from Napa that I am actually pretty happy with for the flares.


https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/SER165C



Kit works inline to make the flare instead of the traditional way. I like it. The only tricky part is getting the brake line squared up from the get go. Once you get that done correctly and tighten the tool together, the rest is cake.


I had read about using Cunifer line and I think I will go with that. I cant think of any reason not too.


Anyone have any input on removing abs vs plumbing the new lines all together?


It seems like a lot going on but if I just replace everything after the prop valve it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Really it only seems like the rear lines are troubled anyways.

Fuel lines will be next to go though. All of the lines running the length of the car in that "channel assembly" or whatever the fuck its called are nasty, super rotten.


No input on where to get the fittings eh?


Probably just swing by the stealership and see what they say.