[HO455]

Dove into the brakes yesterday. The right front brake hose had a cut in the rubber sheathing and had been rubbing on the upper control arm and as I mentioned before the hard line was twisted and the fitting rounded. (Top photo) I'm surprised the WMB stopped as well as it did with the tube twisted and the rear wheel cylinder issue. (Whoops spoiler!) The fittings in the tee were frozen, as was the right side fitting to the hose. The fitting at the proportioning valve came loose so I cut the tubes at the tee and the right hose allowing me to put the tee in the vise and use a six point socket on the fittings and with some penetrating oil until they all came free with out damage. The tubing on the front brakes were two sizes. From the proportioning valve to the tee it was 1/4" tube and from the tee to the hoses it is 3/16". Pretty straightforward as I just matched the bends on the old tubing and flared the ends. Installed the new hoses in the tabs with the U clips and bolted the banjo fitting to the calipers making sure the hoses didn't touch anything throughout the suspension's range of motion I used Brakequip copper nickle tubing. It is easy to work with and if you want it can be polished to a great shine. It is standard equipment on Porsches and other high performance European cars. If you don't have a flaring kit or benders, I recommend Imperial tools, they work well, are reasonably priced, and I'm still able to get replacement parts for the set my dad bought in the early seventies. When we were half way through bleeding the front brakes I noticed that fluid was running out of the right rear brake drum. Tore it down and found the cylinder had a rusty spot that was allowing fluid past the seal cup. So two new wheel cylinders from NAPA. Which they had in stock, but it took two counter people and me 30 minutes to get the stupid computer to spit out the correct part numbers. I was sure glad I took my bad one with me. I got the right one installed, but ran out of time for the left side. I ordered up more tubing and will replace the rear tubing too. I'm not satisfied with how the lines on the rear axle are routed and how the flex hose is ty-rapped to the housing instead bolted down. This causes the tubing to flex every time the axle moves and to slowly work harden the tubing until it cracks. The brake adventure will be continued.