Hi all,
In the last 48hrs I've gone from sitting and scratching my head, to being a brake line swaging ninja and actually being able to remake brake lines and unions at will!
My beloved 940 estate failed it's MOT on Saturday on some pretty minor stuff...a worn rear tyre, play in a track rod end and a perished brake hose.
"SIMPLE!" Cried I...a tyre is child's play, a track rod end is amongst the easiest jobs out there, and a brake hose must be...erm...simple enough, surely?
It wasn't.
With my freshly acquired set of flare nut spanners, the caliper end came undone like a dream. The other end, however, was a total nightmare. The union rounded off instantly, and no amount of persuasion with mole grips or similar would budge it, ending up a totally mashed-up mess. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and the whole thing was so horrible I could barely look at it!
In despair, I did what most conscientious fortysomething amateur mechanics do...I rang my Dad. My old man, now well into his 80s, has more mechanical experience than anyone I've ever met, he was a development engineer for Standard Triumph, and was the first person to introduce exhaust tuning to motorsport. He then jumped ship to Tecalemit Jackson and was one of the pioneers of fuel injection in collaboration with Bosch. Following this, he ran a series of successful garages of his own over many years.
I often ring him with mechanical queries, and his response is always the same. A sigh, an "oh dear", a deep breath and "listen carefully, I'm going to tell you exactly how to sort this out, but I won't repeat myself, so make sure you're listening properly!" He is always right, and his solutions always work perfectly.
This time, he told me I needed to cut the mashed union up and remake the brake line, using a swaging tool, a handheld pipe bender, a small C-style pipe cutter and a spool of 3/16" copper line. I'm a confident DIY spanner spinner with these cars, but for some reason this job seemed beyond my pay grade.
I bought the tools and pipe (all marked boldly "ONLY FOR USE BY A QUALIFIED MECHANIC" by Halfrauds, which was a confidence booster 🤣
and went to work. I cut the line back cleanly, deburred the end, slipped a fresh union on, executed a perfect SAE standard double-flare at the first time of asking (which was something of a surprise!), Bolted the union to the new hose, clipped it all back into place, bled the system with my very useful Gunson Eezibleed, bolted the whole thing back together and...
To my delight, it worked like a charm! The car stops perfectly, no brake imbalance, no pull, zero leaks and 100% success.
I've never done any brake surgery before, beyond bleeding, pads, discs and slide pins. I've always considered this stuff too high-stakes for an amateur ratchet wrangler such as myself, but this job has boosted my confidence immensely.
The bus is back in for its retest tomorrow afternoon...fingers crossed the tester agrees with my assessment of it being a decent enough job!
To my surprise, it works perfectly.