I have been watching utubes of assembly of an AN fitting to hose, and have bought various tools such bench vice jaw for holding fittings, the stainless steel hose cutter and koul tools. I bought some fittings and hoses and practice assembly, I believe I can asseble with no real problems.
I am going to replace all the brake lines on my 73 Dodge dart. I should have my order of brake hardlines from inline tubes today.
I read somewhere that the hardline 45 degrees double flare is better than the 37 degrees of the single flare AN, and AN lines shouldn't be used for brakes at all. Is this true?
I still have to get the hose lines to the caliphers, these come stainless braids and rubber hose. If you look at some performance guys setup, some use AN hose through out the engine bay and brakes too. i plan to get the stainless steel braids for my brake hoses. thanks in advance.

Jerry

I wouldn't even bother, regular lines eventually fail on the inside and cause the front disc on one side or the other to get 'lazy', before that happens you can tell they are old as the rubber coating over the inner liner starts to discolor and crack anyway (then you know it's overdue...)

I replaced my set with a prebent set and it all bolted in and has never been a problem since, I expect in Oregon's climate for them to last about 20 years with the limited driving I do with my duster now.

-D.Idiot

DusterIdiot;

My hard lines from inline tubes came today, but I won't see them till I get home later tonight. i hope they conform to the body shape like they say. I won't be able to work on them for at least a month. I wish we had your weather, I think it is currently below zero without the wind chill, and it has been snowing like crazy this year, they say saturday we may get another 4 inches.
Well, I still have to gather brake hardware, drums , shoes etc. I am going to hava an almost brand new brake system. again thanks Duster Idiot for replying. I'll be happy if it last 5 years.

Jerry

have 4 cars and none of them running. have to depend on my 12 bicycles.

We got dumped on and it's still going here, NOAA expects it to last until Friday evening/Sat. morning....was fun driving today...was more fun seeing people with no common sense speeding along and wiping out...

Stainless brake flex lines are supposed to provide a firmer brake pedal. I run them and like the feel good subjectively. Objectively, I haven't seen any testing or did any side by side comparisons.

I've become a bit of a stainless braid zealot recently. I plumbed my engine bay efi stuff and trans lines with stainless braided teflon lines (not to be confused with stainless braided rubber hose).

I'm not clear on what your asking. You have to use the flare according to the piece your plumbing. All our brake cylinders, master cylinders, proportioning valves etc take a 45 flare, so you can't use an AN 37 flare here. But you likely knew this. Do you mean using adapters to 37deg and using stainless braided flex line to replace the hardline? That'd sure be costly.

Got my box of prebent brake lines from inline tube, rather my can of worms. I guess I won't which tubing goes where, until I take the old one off. I know the two with loops goes to the master cylinder, and the real long one in shipping loop is the front to rear, I guess what remains are the back axle tubes. It's going to be fun.
DusterIdiot...we got 2.5" more of snow, with non of the old melting, as temps are close to zero, they say this year was 8th place of sub zero temp, I think they say 18 days.
Pierre....yes if I was to use AN fittings, I would need to get the adapters to 45 degrees fitting. initially I was thinking stainless steel braids because I am pretty sure bending steel lines was going to be trouble, but I got the prebent kit and we will see how it goes. Still have to get rear drums, shoes and hardware.

Got one last question, my line set was for a 8 1/4 rear and I have a 7 1/4 rear. I ask the sales person, he doesn't know if there was any difference, he was reading off a chart in front of him. I think they are close, maybe a little persuasion bend may be involved, am I correct?

thanks
Jerry

Going back to the first post, 45° flares vs. 37° flares. Neither is better than the other. Each has it's best tube to be used on. The 45° double flare can not be done on common stainless steel tubing because it will crack. I know that at least one aftermarket brake tube vendor offers SS tubing with presumably double flares since they're sold as OE replacements. They must be sourcing an annealed dead soft tube to be able to do this. Some SS tube has to be locally annealed just to get it to form the 37° flare...

SS braided -3AN brake hoses do make a difference. You'll likely never wear out the teflon liner, the braid will fatigue and crack or the braid will fill with grit and wear away first. Newer SS braid -3AN hose has a clear cover over the braid. This is good. I used to use adhesive lined heat shrink on the hoses that I made in the past. The purpose was to keep grit and grime from being able to get into the braid of the brake hoses. Now this cover does that and has saved me a bunch of extra work.

Converting the whole system to -3AN would be a bunch of adapter fittings, and those add up fast. I normally just convert at each end of the hose and leave the rest of the system 45° I.F. unless I'm starting from scratch on something like a tube chassis drag car.

_________________
Thom

Cross-threaded is tighter than Lock-tite

Thom;

I got the prebent tubing from inline tubes, I got the oem ones and not the stainless steel ones. I plan to only use the braid hose on the front to the calipers, rather than the rubber hose. I decided to replace all the brake lines, rather than have them fail on the road, job that I will tackle at the end of March. thanks.....Jerry