Are brakes always this difficult?

I've just been trying to replace my brake flexi hoses today, the MOT man said the rears were on their way out and a full new set wasn't expensive...
Started off with the fronts, gave all the nuts + bolts a good soaking in WD-40 then tried taking them off. the bottom of the hose and the bleed nipple came out fine, but the top one (joint from solid line to flexi hose) wasn't going anywhere. soon enough, the bolt rounded off, and even mole grips wouldn't shift it.
Same went for the other side, i figured the nuts were attached to the solid lines and were dead, so i just chopped the lines and moved on. Got to the OSR, same story, bottom end came out fine, top end seemed to until i realised the solid line was siezed into the nut, and it had completely twisted the pipe.
The NSR i couldn't even manage to break, cos the nuts were too rusted to get a spanner to grip, and there's no space for mole grips...
Am I doing something wrong, or are they always this much of a pain?

Best go buy some new pipes now...

 

practice makes perfect......

 

Heat - always use heat on brake joints

WD40 is crap

 

i tried a blowtorch, didn't do anything...

 

alot of my pipe ends rounded off this weekend...pipes werent rusty the ends just seem soft and i even used a proper spanner

 

This is a job a need to do.......woe and thrice woe.......cos I am THE master at breaking things that are not broke!!THE. Is it better to make up brake lines or is it easier/cheaper to buy them in a kit form. Any good companies that sell kits ??

Jules

 

dunno, i was wondering myself... pipe flarer is about 17 from machine mart, dunno about pipe or ends. will have to find out, the car's off the road 'till i fix it

don't you just love those jobs you wish you'd never started?

 

Kieran, if it works out reasonably cheap to buy the kit I might be
interested in giving you a few quid if I could make some up for myself.
They should be pretty cheap to have made for you if you know a friendly
garage though. I think Oatlands Tyres do brakes...

 

hehe, i can push the car to there
good call, was gonna try SAS tomorrow..

 

You could just take the old line off the car altogether and get a new one
made up to fit yourself. Shouldn't cost too much.

 

NEVER use heat on brake lines!!!! thats like using heat on petrol lines

 

heh, the wd-40 caught fire before the brake fluid got a chance
i'm not worried about the cost tbh, i just wanna get it back on the road, and obtaining parts while i'm working full time is tricky.

 

When I did my rear disc conversion, I had to use a grinder with a cutting disc to remove the brakeline to flexy union where it goes through the bracket on the floorpan just before the back axle as it was completely rounded off I got the measurements for the lines of etka and had the lines made from up out of kunifer (copper/nickle alloy) pipe with the correct ends at the local motor factors, had to take the ends down as they wanted to know how they were flared.

 

Just a quick pointer you may wana take note of...to avoid rounding the
bolt make sure your using a decent spanner for a start. Cheap ones will
flex causing it to slip and round off

 

It's a myth, using a bit of heat on brake lines is fine.

 

i know somone who has had a brake line blow up in their face when using a blowtorch on a joint!. Also somone on here had a pipe blow on them!

 

it gets better... the rear hoses from GSF are wrong (male -> female rather than female -> female) and the rear bleed nipples didn't quite come out in the right shape... but i guess they're out at least. more than can be said for the NSR flexi hose which is still stuck in the bracket.
been down to VW for the parts, hoses are 10.41 + VAT a side dunno about the bleed nipples...

 

Rusty MK2 brake lines
Been there done that.

It's a sod of a job. I just removed all my brake lines right back to the master cylinder and replaced them with copper pipes.
Got bits from a few sources. GSF, SAS, IVC and the dealers for a few clips etc.

Got the flaring tool from machine mart (works a treat with the copper pipe, won't do the orgional steel ones though- too hard)

Also had the whole car on axle stands and used a one man pressure bleeding system to bleed the brakes afterwards.

 

it looks like some of the pipes have been replaced before, all of them have been copper except the NSR which is a silver metal, steel or alu?
new pipes are being made today, pick up rear hoses tomorrow.. lets hope the weather is good this weekend to re-fit it all

 

i take it the pipe ends are 11mm and not some wierd a/f size??? maybe that'd explian why i rounded mine off