Met my Match - (Double Flare Disaster)

This I discovered when I bought my first car..a Rambler station wagon. The previous owner had replaced the break lines with copper tubing.

I discovered the problem with copper tubing one afternoon at a red light in Gaylord, Michigan, when I stomped on the brake pedal..and there was a pop- Floosh noise from the rear of the car..and the old bitch kept right on steaming into the intersection where I T-boned a

66 Mustang painted white with black spots. The state trooper followed the twin lines of break fluid down the block about 150 feet. He said I must have been pumping like a son of a bitch to have pumped the system dry.

I had that car about a week. I got an $18 ticked for failure to stop at a red light..the previous owner got to pay for the repairs to the mustang...or have every state trooper in the area bird dog his ass the moment he put key into the ignition.

First and only accident I have had in about 3,000,000 miles of driving (lighting a candle, saying a prayer, spinning a prayer wheel, while rubbing a rabbits foot and munching on a 4 leaf clover)

Gunner

The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.

In the past few decades, a peculiar and distinctive psychology has emerged in England. Gone are the civility, sturdy independence, and admirable stoicism that carried the English through the war years . It has been replaced by a constant whine of excuses, complaints, and special pleading. The collapse of the British character has been as swift and complete as the collapse of British power.

Theodore Dalrymple,

Copper is illegal on brake systems. Likewise compression (olive) type fittings because they can blow out.

Copper is also unwise on vehicles for oil or fuel systems. It work hardens and can fracture unexpectedly.

This is one way you can tell restored vehicles that are hanger queens. All that polished-up copper tubing for the fuel and oil lines. Looks real pretty.

Jim

That's one time a slight misspelling predicts the remainder of the story.

I too remember those pre-dual brake system days.

As a matter of fact, with the first car I ever owned* I didn't need to worry about burst brake lines.

It was a Ford Model A from the thirties, and had four wheel mechanical brakes. It was also the easiest damn car to work on I ever had, you could do practically everything with just an adjustable wrench, a screwdriver and sometimes a BFH.

Jeff

• Slight mistatement, I actually only owned half of it, my high school buddy Pete owned the other half. AFAICR my half was the one which needed fixin' by me and his half as the one he did unmentionable things to girls in while "parking" at Inspiration Point in San Francisco.

Thanks for the mammaries...

And, to add a bit more insult to injury, the insert's peg must be smaller than the ID of the tubing else you couldn't very well form that first stage "hollow point bullet" shape with it, 'eh?

Jeff

I spent the morning before my one and only driver's test replacing the brake rods on the family car. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

I still own and drive two vehicles like that.

Each one has two-wheel mechanical brakes.

Jim

And get infinite gas milage too!

Jeff

Actually not. One gets about 45, the other about 40.

This is the 40 one:

The other one is *almost* finished after having been off the road for about two years. Frame off, powder coated, engine all apart and re-worked, new everything nearly. Because that one is 500 cc and geared quite tall it gets better mileage.

But they both have mechanical brakes, dual leading shoes in front and single leading in the back. When set up properly they work better than the disk brakes that were put on their successors.

Jim

My old '49 beetle had 4 wheel cable operated brakes - hand brake applied all 4 through the same set of cables.

My '28 Chevy National had 4 wheel rod operated brakes, external band on the rear, with a hand operated internal expanding brake on the rear. To stop real fast you used both to keep the relatively lightweight drums from distorting.

Oops, guessed wrong, I wuz thinking pedal powered bicycles.

Nice!

Jeff

The emergency brake in the '55 Chrysler convertible the first SWMBO and I used to run sports car rallies in had a single cable operated drum brake just behind the xmission to snag the prop shaft.

The teams in the real sporty cars laughed when we showed up in that monster, but changed their tunes when we started taking home trophies.

I still have a photo of that car, and the motor driven Curta Calculator rig I built just for rally computing.

Jeff

Cute, but you have MY IP address wrong -- you have the IP of my router ;-)

mikey

OK, so Honda wants $77 for a preformed eggsack duplicate brake line (If they can even deliver one.)

Even I'm not crazy enough to spend that for about 5 feet of 3/16" tubing.

So, we'll measure the required path length of the brake line with a piece of #12 solid electrical wire and buy one of those premade lengths of brake tubing with the double flares and fitting ends already on it. If we have to buy one a little long we can pack the excess somewhere with a U bend.

The only tubing benders I own are the coil spring kind, so we're going to have to use another style of bender.

But, all the lever type benders I've found for sale so far seem to start out with 1/4" tubing size and go up from there.

Izzat because you can do 3/16" steel tubing freehand down to about a one inch radius bend without it kinking? Or is it maybe because you can use the 1/4" mandrill on those lever type benders for 3/16" tubing too?

I'd just as soon teach the kid to do things the *raht way* now, he'll have plenty of opportunity to excercise creative butchery on his own when he leaves the nest.

Thanks guys,

Jeff

Jeff Unless you have some critical tight bends, all you need is your hands. That tubing is designed to be hand-bendable. It will take a lot of abuse before it kinks. And if it does, get another piece, call it a $5 lesson about the limits of the tbing :)

Thanks, you prolly just saved me the $20 needed to buy a tool I have gotten along this far without and may never have need for again.

(Hell, at my age I don't even buy green bananas anymore!)

Jeff

I'd still bend it around a round object, though. Anything that's handy. That way bending stress follows the curve with little or no moment going to the already-bent part.

According to Don Foreman :

And -- since you are working on a car, a set of sockets will provide you with lots of radius samples to choose from.

Enjoy, DoN.

expanding on this theme, and intentionally top posting to annoy the purists - I have a 1938 plymouth P6, whcih for years was my only car - it had a external band emergency brake behind the trans which would get nicely covered with oil - one day I came up to a red light kinda fast, there was a small car already stopped at the light, and when I pressed on the brake pedal, there was nothing - the fluid had leaked out. So, I pulled the trusty emergency brake lever, compressing the oiliy band around the oily drum. Now, this big car was going about

45, so even with the oil, there was a lot of heat, but not much friction (initially), leading to a good rush of adrenalin. So, I downshifted from 3rd to 2nd (you could do that by double clutching), and the straight 6 let out a startled roar, causing the guy inthe small car to look in his rear view mirror to see what bad thing was about to happen to him. About that time, the heat in the band reached critical temperature and the oil caught fire (huge puf of black smoke comes out both sides of the car and a burst of flames from the oil vapor) - I see the eyes in the rear view mirror get much bigger and the shoulders tense up. With the puff of flames, the oil was all gone, so now the brake worked and locked up the rear wheels and I skidded to a stop about 6 inches from his rear bumper - as I stopped the light changed, and he drove off kinda shakily. I followed, using the now clean parking brake for the rest of my journey.

aaah, the folly of youth.

Bill

to contact me, do not reply to this message, instead correct this address and use it

will iam_ b_ No ble at msn daught com

I Had a 29 Chev when I was a kid. The braking system was mechanical on it as well. It was always interesting when you hit the brakes. The only direction it wouldn't head for was straight ahead!

Tom