SAM.

As I put in my first response to your post above, if you want a kit to fit your car, call Bill Reilly at bigblockdart.com or look at his webpage. He can sell you exactly what you want, and already has kits for factory type brakes. I posted this above.

Greg Zaneski at Magnumhp.com also has kits like this with all fittings included.

Often I get the feeling you do not read my responses to your questions.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Don't take it personally, I'm just getting old. That is not a flippant response. It is true. As sad as it seems, as we age, our short term memory seems to fade as our long term memory gets better. Eventually we remember first grade but not ten minutes ago. Of course it is way more complicated than that. There is also the guy at work who is stealing from the company, and we have to figure out how to catch, prove, discpline, fire, etc,etc. So real life kind of becomes a more pressing concern. And that is just one of the challenges of owning your own business. And, I like to take in as much info as I can before taking action. I am a classic "P" on the Briggs-Myers personality profile. Look it up on line and you will understand me better.

The hobby is what keeps me sane, (maybe), but there is certainly the problem of info overload on all fronts. Thanks very much for your tips. I try to read and integrate all ideas as they come up before making any decision, especially when they are as controversial as this turned out to be. And, as I hope you have figured out by now, just because I ask a question does not mean I endorse or reject any answer ahead of time.

In the process I can certainly lose track of what was said early on. It would help to go back and re-read any long, complex thread for all pertinant, and helpful suggestions, but again, as more opinions come in, there is more info to sift through, and the decision some times gets cloudier, not clearer. When Ems posted his link to the Audi guy, I thought, oh good, I can finish. And then Dan came on with his opinions, and everything came screaching to a halt. Which is OK in this case, as maybe the car would not come screaching to a halt later if I dont; take my time now. I was actually thinking of calling you and consulting with you personally this morning. This particular thread has many, many intriguing facets to it.

It did kind of stop my project in mid stream when I read the various posts. What I thought was going to be back on the road on Friday, is just sitting, while I sort all this out. And, I have to go to work now, so things are dead in the water as they say. Thanks again.

Sam

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OK, I won't take it personally if you try to read back a little more before you type in a question.

Remember, I am a professional scientist, and it is my job to read, read, read the literature out there and digest it and use it to my advantage. Printed/online material can be very useful and efficient and save lots of questions.

I'm not saying I would never use the "make it yourself" lines, but I'm kinda on Dan's side, and the complete lines are really not expensive enough to warrant you spending time to make your own and risking your car/neck.

https://www.reillymotorsports.com/ has contact info for Bill.

He has changed his site and I don't see the online store at the moment. A 5 min phone call would get you the lines you need, I'm pretty sure.
His number is on there.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

I like the strain relief feature.
If you are looking at a DOT-certified hose, that is correct.
That's right. The actual hose you buy has not been pressure tested; one like it has been tested.
I guess it comes down to whether the "Sh*t happens" principle (which is why FMVSS 105 doesn't permit threaded fittings...at least in theory, any threaded fitting can come unscrewed, at which point you're screwed) is a sufficiently serious concern to prevent you going forward this way. The answer depends on whether the rest of the materials and construction techniques are identical to the DOT-certified hoses they offer.
I have limited practical experience with AN fittings — just enough to know that there are the real ones, and there are dozens or hundreds of lookalike copycats, of significantly poorer quality and durability, readily available on the market. I have seen a few of these copycats fail (split), and then you know it was a copycat, but I'm not well enough connected to the world of AN fittings to know what to watch for beforehand. I also don't know whether anaerobic threadlocker (Locktite) is helpful, harmful, or neutral when assembling these fittings.

I should also clarify that I am not saying your own-made lines are necessarily unsafe. My main purpose here is to try and put the brakes (sorry) on some persistent misinformation, e.g. "DOT approval", and to raise some issues for consideration so you can go forward (however you will) with as close to full information as possible. Vehicle safety equipment regulation involves a great deal more philosophy than most people realise. That's why cars that're considered safe enough to travel at unlimited speeds on the Autobahn are considered so unsafe as to be unlawful to import for wafting along at 65 mph on the Interstate. In order to consider the safety effects of doing something other than the regular way, it's necessary to sort out the contents of the applicable regulations: Which requirements are there for legitimate safety-based reasons? Which ones are there through inertia and lack of industry/government interest in changing the regs? Which ones are there to create non-tarrif trade barriers? Most of the US regulations contain a mix of provisions that fit into these three categories (and a few others). In this particular case, I have qualms about directly contravening a basic technical requirement in FMVSS 105 (i.e., the requirement for permanently-attached fittings). However, it is possible that my relative lack of knowledge regarding AN fittings prevents me seeing or understanding that their use would provide safety performance and durability at least equivalent to that required by FMVSS 105.

There is one other factor to ponder, and it's one I hate bringing up: Ponder the following scenario: You have a crash, and there's property damage, personal injury, and/or fatality. There's an investigation, and it's discovered your car was equipped with brake hoses not compliant with FMVSS 105. There's a lawsuit. Whether or not the crash was due to a failure of your brake lines, their noncompliance is introduced as evidence. You fill in the rest of the story. I hate that our system is stacked this way, and I hate that it means we have to live in fear of out-of-control lawsuits, but that's the system we have right now.
Cigarettes are on the market. So are motorcycles. Both are extremely dangerous. There are mountains of dangerous, illegal automotive lighting equipment readily available on the internet or in most speed shops. An item's availability on the market does not imply its safety or its suitability for any given application.
That market-control mechanism moves slowly and sporadically. Lawn Darts aren't on the market any more, that I know of, for this reason. But a lot of people bought Lawn Darts, and not many people buy non-DOT brake hoses. Furthermore, look at how long the hideously dangerous Ford Pinto remained on the market, unrecalled, the design and construction flaws unfixed and unacknowledged by its maker, because Ford had deep pockets and lots of lobbyists and lawyers to fight.
There is no such thing as DOT approval. There is no mechanism in law by which DOT has the authority to approve anything.
Nope. And contrary to popular belief, the phrase "Off-road use only" in advertising, packaging, or as a label on the item itself is legally meaningless and does not shield the maker or importer of a regulated item of vehicle equipment from his obligation to comply with applicable standards.
Right, but if you choose to ignore those warnings and gore yourself with a hammer, that doesn't affect anyone beyond you and your own (you might sue the hammer maker if you survive, or your family might do the same if you don't, which is why the warning's there in the first place).

On the other hand, if you modify the safety equipment of your vehicle in some way, and as a direct or indirect result there is a traffic crash, then that affects others beyond you and your family. I know you're not espousing the "Buzz off, it's my car, and I can do what I damn well please, and the rest of the world can go hang" kind of attitude, but there are those who do take such a position. A slight variant of this position on the part of the automakers ("Buzz off, it's a free market; if people really wanted us to build safer & cleaner cars they wouldn't be buying the ones we make now") is why we have Federal Motor Vehicle Safety (and emissions) Standards at all.
Oh, but they do. The industry's lobbying association is called SEMA, and they take all kinds of idiotic, knuckledragger actions contrary to the public wellbeing.
Aw, I was just razzin' ya, hence the smiley.
True and correct. "Good brake hoses are better than bad brake hoses" is a statement nobody could argue with. The lengthy conversation comes when we try to grapple with what is "good" and what is "bad".
Agreed. What I was trying to get at was that there's sometimes only a very subtle difference between salesmanship and lying.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I have seen the right parts at the sources listed by others too. I am just using stock type Raybestos hoses as I did not find the right trick parts back when I was looking. Aside from just getting a good hose that will not burst and will connect at both ends, I was concerned about it staying that way and not failing from all the flexing in it's life time.

Aside from whatever the DOT standards might be, it would be hard to make "sure" any home made lines are safe.

A long held safety factor of 5-1 has been used in aerospace life support equipment and has been adopted in other industries where life is at stake. That means failure load is 5 times workload. This standard really works and our tax dollars paid for the research already.

For example in my work we only use hardware for overhead rigging that meets this safety factor, as a minimum. We only use equipment that can be traced all the way back thru the manufacturer, and make sure we have our paperwork in order. I have never even heard of a hardware failure when things were done to accepted standards with the right equipment.

The only way to test your hoses would be a hydro static test. You would need a test group of hoses, I would use the 5-1 standard. Some would be tested to failure, that would have to be more than 5 times the working pressure. The failure points would have to be analyzed. A complete procedure would have to be written up for assembly, a checklist made for inspections..... After the hydro testing is good, duty cycles would be next. It goes on and on. Engineers would probably not agree about every aspect...

No one here can really tell you what you put together, you are in the best spot to make that call. BUT, only if you have the data about your parts and are sure about how they went together and have not missed anything. I am not sure what the max PSI in your system might be, but is it much more than a few hundred psi.

Myself I would use a finished part from a reputable source.

AN fittings are fine for brake line pressure and you can find lots of braided steel brake hoses with DOT labels on them.

I stopped using braided hose in my brake systems years ago because I didn't like the abrasion. I now have new rubber lines made up by a local shop who has the capability of doing a 3000 psi burst test. This is actually a fairly common piece of equipment so if you ask around you'll probably find a shop that can do it for you. Get out the Yellow Pages and call up shops that build hyd lines for big rigs, they usually have the right equipment.

Thanks for sharing, Andy. Keller Truck is right around the corner from my work, and they make up hydraulic hoses. I thought of that after I went ahead and ordered Earl's braided lines from Summit for $12 each plus shipping. It was cheap enough, and in the time it took for them to arrive, I scraped and painted the sub frame between the upper control arms and the bumper mount brackets.

One heads up I might put out there: A real "DUH" moment. I mounted the calipers thinking only about the way the lines would run, and not about where the bleeders are mounted. I incorrectly swapped the two sides, which put the bleeders on the lower corner of each caliper, not the top. The upshot: There is still a corner of each caliper with a little bit of trapped air. The bleeders need to be at the top. TWO DUH's! They stop fine, but the pedal is not as high as it should be, nor as firm as it will be once I reverse them. "Do as I say, not as I do."

Sam

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