Want to bounce this off anyone that has done this before. I have a 97 B2500 3.9L van and I want to replace the front brake lines including the brake hoses, the lines are getting rusty and want to do something now than later. Now I see the right side (passenger) it looks like the line goes under the radiator? and the driver side looks fairly obivious and one line goes torwards the back.

I have a small pipe bender and a brake flaring tool/kit, so just wondering if anyone has some tips to share or things I should be concerned about before I start this project.

Thanks,

Eric

 

The one concern is that your flaring tool needs to be a double flaring tool for brake lines.

 

Yeah its a double flaring tool.

 

only other thing i can think of, when i replaced my lines, the OEM brake line clips didnt work that well on retaining the thinner/smoother replacement lines. I ended up using a fair amount of zip ties to keep 'em in place. not a big deal.

 

Replacing those hoses up front onto the frame may require you to drill a through hole in the pad block (not the block area with brake fluid) and a self tap hole on the top of the frame. I ran into this small problem doing mine. Brake parts were a good deal at Rockauto.com back then. I didn't do the hard lines like you are looking at. ALSO, when tightening up those hard lines and such, the hard lines are thin walled and soft aluminum, so be EXTRA careful not to twist the lines as you tighten the flare fittings.

 

In fact I order the hoses through rockauto.com could'nt pass up the price. thanks for the tip about the self tap on top of the frame. yeah these hard lines are really rusted bad. I'm going to have to see where that steel goes through from the passenger side over to the driver side though, looks like its under the rad. but not sure. thanks for tip!

 

Let me know how it goes, I found a set off of We R Mopar for the van to run this weekend. I haven't crawled under a vehicle for quite some time so It may not be pretty.

 

yeah not a problem I'm thinking in about a week or so I'll start this project, hopefully i'll have some pictures to show.

 

Just finished the brake lines and it wasn't to bad though the factory ran the line from the passenger side to the driver side they ran it where I could not do myself, so I ran it a little differently pretty much same area just near the power steering area.

This wasn't to hard just make sure you take off the reg. overflow tank and the windshield tank you'll get more room by doing that.

thanks,
Eric