okay, the ones on the front of my truck are all rusted..to the point where I'm worrying about a pin hole popping up in the middle of a steep mountain road.

Went to the dealer, and they dont make/sell most of the brake lines that I need.
Went to the local auto parts stores, and although they do sell the correct sized hard lines, in different lengths...the connectors they come with do not fit. They are different from the dodge connectors, and I dont mean in thread pitch...but the threads do not go to the ends of the connectors like the factory ones.

So, I ordered a 25 foot roll of tubing from the dealer, got a flare tool from advanced auto, and am planning on reusing the connectors (they are cleaning up well...)

My question is this....
I think I am flaring the tube like the factory. I mean, it looks the same anyways.... It is close, if not exactly like the factory flare.
How close does it have to be to work? The last thing I want is to flare all of the tubes, bend them to fit, get everything hooked up, bleed the brakes...and find none of the connections are sealing and I'm getting brake fluid all over the place...

 

Practice, practice, practice. It took me a long time to be able to do a decent double flare, and it still doesn't work perfectly every single time. A couple things I learned along the way.

- use brake fluid to lubricate between the die and the line while you are flaring, instead of doing it dry.

- I finally bought a really nice Snap-On flaring kit, and found it gives much better results than a cheap jobber unit.

- the tighter you can make the clamp that holds the line, the better.

- you will always make at least one perfect flare, then have to cut it off because you forgot to slide the fitting onto the line first.

Have fun. If you can do one line at a time and test it for a day before doing another, all the better. Anyway, there's a small bit of leeway with the final product. It may not look 100%, but if it looks 90%, it'll work.

 

Thanks for the tips.
I'm gonna try it with some lubricating brake fluid, and see how that works.

I was thinking of doing one, then bleeding the brakes and testing it out...just knew this was gonna be a little bit more work then bleeding it all at once.

regards,
matt

 

Been there, Done that!