Hi,

This is a grumble thread cuz i'm grumpy. I had a brake line blow on me today, and it appears to be obscured by the gas tank. We went on a random drive today to burn an hour during a house showing. On our way back started stopping to make a turn and the peddle went right to the floor; certainly uncomfortable to say the least.

I'm at the cusp of ditching this van. It's been a great van, has been in the family since 2001, but the rust has just KILLED the poor thing. I've been limping her along for about a year now, and I just don't know if I have it in me to do the repair.

Le sigh.... /whining

 

I've decided I'm going to put a brake line on it this weekend. If I can squeeze a bit more out of her with a relatively simple fix, why not?

 

Anyone happen to know off the top of your head what diameter line I need for the rear? It looks like I'm going from what I assume is a proportioning valve back to the rear. I am probably going to use the NiCopp line and think I'll try and do both rear lines.

 

looks like I'm going from the proportioning valve back to some rubber junction that then feeds more metal lines. I need to go exchange my flare nut wrenches now because apparently these aren't SAE nuts...

 

Done for the night. I got 1 flare nut out of the proportioning valve (and of course twisted up the line in the process, which is fine). I'm having a bear of a time getting the other nut out of the rubber lines though. I may just hack the line and try a 6pt socket on it tomorrow. For tonight, I have it wrapped in a paper towel soaked in PB Blaster in hopes it'll eat away some of the rust.

Apparently an 11mm flare nut wrench is a fairy tale. I had to use a standard open end wrench on the flare nut to get it out. I'm fairly certain these flare nuts didn't used to be 11mm; I'm thinking they're smaller due to rusty crusty. The one on the rubber side is smaller than 11mm but bigger than 10mm.

I'm not sure if I'm doing both lines or not yet. I know I SHOULD because they're both crusty, but it'll depend on time. I may have to put the other one off 'til later. The other line doesn't look as bad as the one that died.

 

rear flare nut is out of the rubber line. Off to the part store to get replacements so I can flare up some new lines and get this betch back on the road

 

Job is done. I ended up having to replace the driver side wheel cylinder too because, as I expected, the bleeder valve snapped off inside the old one.