Front brake lines
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From: Austria Europe
Front brake lines
Today I had some not too nice thing happening to my truck.
Caught a piece of wire from the street. This damaged my right front brake line, right where it goes into the caliper.
Since I was scheduled for the annual inspection, off we go to the brake tester. Bam, voila, brake line burst. OK this ****** me off a little. But what made me really angry was that upon close inspection I found that both hoses had rubbed on the control arms. You won't see the places where it had rubbed while changing tires, but they were both rather close to failing on this point. The other problem I found is that the hose gets kinked when turning to full lock on the steering wheel. This seems to have weakened the right hose to the point where a little bit of wire was sufficient to make it blow up under full pressure. Luckily this was on the brake tester and not in an emergency brake situation.
Now the truck is down until 2 new lines do arrive, brake rotors should be here by then too and I think I'll have to look for a way to circumvent the problems Ifound with the stock setup. I can only suggest that you put these lines under close scrutiny. Especially the kinks and the rubbing in stock form are very disappointing and a sign of bad engineering to me.
AlpineRAM
Caught a piece of wire from the street. This damaged my right front brake line, right where it goes into the caliper.
Since I was scheduled for the annual inspection, off we go to the brake tester. Bam, voila, brake line burst. OK this ****** me off a little. But what made me really angry was that upon close inspection I found that both hoses had rubbed on the control arms. You won't see the places where it had rubbed while changing tires, but they were both rather close to failing on this point. The other problem I found is that the hose gets kinked when turning to full lock on the steering wheel. This seems to have weakened the right hose to the point where a little bit of wire was sufficient to make it blow up under full pressure. Luckily this was on the brake tester and not in an emergency brake situation.
Now the truck is down until 2 new lines do arrive, brake rotors should be here by then too and I think I'll have to look for a way to circumvent the problems Ifound with the stock setup. I can only suggest that you put these lines under close scrutiny. Especially the kinks and the rubbing in stock form are very disappointing and a sign of bad engineering to me.
AlpineRAM
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Joined: Jan 2003
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From: The "real" Northern CA
Re:Front brake lines
What about installing steel braided lines? As long as your getting new ones why not get good ones? I dont even know if they are available for these trucks.
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Registered User
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 3,733
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From: Austria Europe
Re:Front brake lines
Bought some Bendix lines that were available over here and they are a better fit. No more rubbing. But there is still a lot of pull on the right brake line when steering to full left. 
I was thinking about braided stuff, but first they were not available within short time, and second the stock lines are braided with a protective rubber coating. So I didn't see an advantage. Maybe if there were braided lines with an additional steel armor this could prove worthwhile, but only if the routing was also changed to avoid the kinking and pulling like on the original stuff.
AlpineRAM
I was thinking about braided stuff, but first they were not available within short time, and second the stock lines are braided with a protective rubber coating. So I didn't see an advantage. Maybe if there were braided lines with an additional steel armor this could prove worthwhile, but only if the routing was also changed to avoid the kinking and pulling like on the original stuff.
AlpineRAM
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