[s-cars] Rear brake saga - The Questions have Ended!

[Steve Powers]

Teddy -

> steve, no need to get personal here.  this is for eric's information,
> nothing else, and it's actually all the same to me whether he goes with
> banjo or NPT.

there's nothing personal about it. look at it from Eric's perspective.
you and I are offering different and equally valid solutions. in the
end Eric will choose a solution and will live with that choice. this
discussion is hopefully helping him to recognize the issues associated
with the solutions we used.

> i don't particularly like pre-made hoses, because i've had swaged
> fittings start leaking between the hose and swaged fitting.  also, because
> the hoses on the car are different lengths, i have to have several
> different sizes of spares.  i assemble my own out of bulk hose.  all
> i need are a length of bulk hose and some compression sleeves, and i can
> do a field replacement on any hose on the car in minutes.

IMO, DIY hoses are fine for race cars and other liability limited
applications. an insurance company might think differently should you
ass-end or run over somebody because your homebrew brake lines failed.
the solution I chose was DOT approved from a reputable vendor. my
risk, my choice.

> the trouble i had with interference was when i tried to use a banjo hose
> end with bulk hose.  the hose end had a hex on it (for attachment to the
> hose), which was large enough to prevent the crush washers from seating
> fully against the banjo and caliper.  it felt OK, and it looked OK, but
> ten minutes into the first drive, the brake warning light went on and i
> found it was leaking badly.  my quick fix was to add a second crush washer
> under the banjo to space the hex away from the caliper body.  the pre-made
> hoses with swaged banjo ends don't have the hex so they don't have
> interference problems.  but as i said before, i've had bad experiences
> with swaged fittings.  YMMV.

understood. the compression fitting for the DIY hoses adds stack
height and created an interference problem. the swaged fittings I have
seen don't have that issue. you chose to solve the problem one way -
another might have been to choose a banjo end with a 30/45/90 degree
bend in it - I think my lines have a 30 degree kink in the banjo.

just sayin'...

Steve