Easy job, horrid job

[Ignatzcatz]

After getting my 911 mot'd late Summer the guys at Cridfords told me that a couple of the flexible brake pipes on the car were looking a bit scabby, no leaks thankfully but they reckon they were well past there sell by date. During the next week I got on to Design 911 and ordered up a set of Goodridge braided hoses. However, I waited until I took the car off the road for the Winter to do the job which I thought would be nothing more than straightforward maintenance. Starting at the front of the car whilst the fixed pipes from the strut to the caliper looked good the 11mil nuts were seized solid to the pipes. Thankfully the nuts to the flexy hose came loose but I still had to make up two front pipes. At the rear of the car the problem with seized nuts was the same but this time it was not just the fixed pipe from the caliper to the trailing arm, it was the centre car pipe to the inner flexy hose that had seized nuts as well, on the offside there is a small amount of working space but on the nearside the pipe is above the gearbox oil cooler and there is just no space to work up there. I tried to work the nut loose on the nearside with heat et. but I ruptured the pipe. On the nearside I didn't want this to happen so I unscrewed the flexy hose off the pipe nut and with a clamp on the pipe and copious amounts of Plus Gas and WD40 got this nut loose and turning on the pipe, but it did take half a day laying under the car moving the nut a couple of degrees at a time back and forth until it released its rusty hold. Phew, one result. However, I had no alternative but to endeavour to double flare the other pipe in situ up by the gearbox. There was no way I could gain access to this pipe without removing the gearbox crossmember and whatever else. I managed to double flare the pipe but this left the pipe too short to meet up with the bracket that fixes the inner end of the flexy hose so pipe no. 5 had to be made which needed a male nut to go into the flexy hose and a female nut to go over the newly flared car bit of pipe. And did I have a metric female nut? Of course not, only Imperial in the brake spares box. Thankfully the size is a regular 10mil x 1.0 so I tapped a thread into an Imperial nut and we were back in business again. I'm two days into this job now but all the new pipes got bent to shape and installed without any further problems plus the new Goodridge hoses were installed. I manually bled the brakes then power bled them and I'm pleased to say have got a solid brake pedal.
So if you might have this job on your menu for the future start now with the wire brush and lots of penetrating fluid and hopefully all your nuts will come undone and it will be an easy job and not a horrid one.

[neilbardsley]

I once couldn't get a flexible hose of either. No amount of fluid and cleaning. In the end I heated it but that just popped the hose off. Which enabled me to separate in a vice.

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[rhd racer]

I have found that often the best thing to do (where space allows) is to cut the pipe or the flexi as close as you can to the union, and then use a deep socket on the side you have just cut, and a spanner on the opposing hex. It sounds like this might have helped you with one of these but not the other.

I share your pain! Sometimes the simplest of jobs are the worst on these old cars...

[Gary71]

Horrible job!

Also really helps to have a proper brake pipe spanner to avoid rounding the fittings.

[Ignatzcatz]

The worst pipe at the rear was seized For Life. I even gave it the heat treatment with oxy acetylene, very gingerly with a very small nozzle but in the end I had to cut it off with a disc on the air angle grinder. I guess it's not surprising really because the car is best part of 34 years old, anyway I finished off my brake job by drilling out all the holes in the brake discs and there must be a million of the buggers.