[Second Series]

I may have been better off to follow my instinct when I was wrestling bolts in the pick-it yard. The brake line that I got just would not attach to the brake hose on the passenger side. It seems to be metric. So the ’88 gmc has SAE brake fittings and the ’95 chevy has metric brake fittings. I haven’t found any information on when the change was made. I searched for brake hose and found only SAE for the whole range of years, ’88 to ‘98. The brake line kits that I found don’t specify if metric or SAE, only that they work for a range of years 88-89, 90-94, and 95-98. I searched for an adaptor and made several trips to various stores. I found a M10-1.0 female to 3/8-24” female adaptor. With that I was able to verify the fittings that I have. I did order a M10-1.0 to 3/8-24” adaptor but it didn’t specify how it went. Another trip to the auto parts store when they came in only to discover it was backwards from what I need. In the end I purchased a Flaring tool. I used the fittings from my old line, and put them on the new to me line. Now the line is in place I’m ready to cut the rod to the brake booster, thread it, and connect to the pedal. I haven’t used a flaring tool before. I watched some videos, and read some web posts. I decided to try the cheepo tool. Did a couple practice flares to figure out some bugs. I set the tool in a vise and used visegrips to keep the two halves level. I had read that there could be problems if the two halves are not level. I also read to set the tube length to a chamfer on the die, but the cheepo die doesn’t have much on a chamfer. I pressed the die. The claws on this version don’t have a consistent flat area, so the press tries to lean. I press some and then flip it around and so on. The two bars don’t seem to clamp together leaving a gap. The 3/8 part is near the end. I found that clamping the end more first and then tightening the other end gave better results. The second pressing without die was pretty straight forward. The end result looks good to me. There was a ridge on each side where the bar gap was, so I filed that down. The true test will be with pressure in the line.