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Brake hoses


Vaughan

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Should you ever use rubber for brake lines? Won't they swell with the hydraulic force, losing your braking force?

If that's not a problem and you mean the exposed brake hose to the caliper, it's probably recommended to have it braided. Exposed to the elements, you don't want a stone cutting the pipe and losing all your brakes 😮

Edited by nelmo
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Turn the wheel to full lock both ways, and with the suspension on full bump and full droop - if the hose doesn't get kinked, touch anything or get pulled taught at any point, then it'll be fine ;)

 

Edited by brumster
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Rubber brake hoses are fabric braided to withstand the pressure, it will have about a 4:1 safety factor. As for temperature they are made from the same material as the seals in the calipers and will be good for 150°C, much higher and you will be boiling the fluid anyway.

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3 hours ago, Vaughan said:

Thanks Brumster, you da man!

is the nut on the end of the braided hose ok for Iva?

 Thanks 

Vaughan

Not quite sure what you mean, but if you're on about sharp edges and whether they'd fail it for that, you will be fine. They're not that pedantic, that I'm aware of ;)

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trouble with braided hoses is that you can't tell that the rubber lining is perishing happily underneath the braiding. At least with rubber hoses you can visibly see any damage. Pretty much every production car uses normal rubber (not actual rubber but whatever material it is) hoses, with every car i've worked on having them direct into the caliper only exception i can think of is the rear sierra setup as the rubber hose connects across the swingarm to a solid pipe, but that is because the hub/brake is fixed to the swing arm so doesn't need to move at that point. 

It's is a bit more exposed on a 7 so i guess there is the potential for more damage than a normal car but i would imagine it is still quite rare and on the flip side you can actually see them easily so you can just have a look every now and then as you walk by. I guess you could put a plastic spiral wrap around it if you were really worried but in 10 years my 2b brake hoses don't have a scratch on them. When was the last time you looked at your tin-tops brake hoses?

If a brake hose did fail you should still have braking as it should be a split system. The sierra master cylinder i have is a 3-way but more modern cars have a 4-way split diagonally.

 

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Braided hoses are typically PTFE lined, not rubber. They are prefferential in every way, I'd say - they are more resilient to hits/cuts/damage, they last longer and they also maintain line pressure better than rubber. That's not to say there's anything wrong with rubber hoses, like you say they suit manufacturers of production cars day in and day out! As with all these things it's down to cost, I suspect :)

You can also get braided lines made up to pretty much any length you want of course, but rubber ones you'll be having to half'inch them from a production car where the dimensions and fittings are exactly what you need.

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Braided hoses wouldn't last on a production car doing normal mileage over maybe 10 years because they wouldn't last the movement cycles required. 

I know one oem tested braided hoses on high mileage durability cars and they had problems with hoses failing. I can't remember the exact details but I think it may actually have been the braiding breaking and then cutting in to the liner. 

On a car that does lower mileage and is regularly checked, it isn't going to be an issue so I don't have a problem with using them on the kit, but I wouldn't be comfortable with having them on a five year old daily driver where they've only had a cursory check at mot time. 

 

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That's interesting. Makes sense; I've seen (on competition cars) that braided lines can fray over time but naturally put that down to rather extreme use :D. They also don't respond well to kinking or crushing and stay deformed afterwards, so I guess that's probably the problem.

Edited by brumster
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