Braided brake lines

[Fast Eddie]

Not sure where to put this thread...

I am curious as to people's belief if new braided brake and clutch lines are worth fitting to a road going Alfa?
Many do fit them for heavy road / competition type use and of course original brake lines on an older Alfa will be old lines but...

[Duk]

http://autospeed.com.au/cms/A_2679/article.html is an interesting and a lot more impartial than major magazine article on the subject of braided brake lines.
Simply put, there is way to much flex in the fire wall of the 116 chassis to even come close to getting any of the performance claims of braided brake lines.
Having said that, Performatek's braided brake lines are well priced and Teflon (I'm guessing that they are Teflon hose) should last a lot longer than rubber.

[colcol]

Braided brake lines were illegal on road cars a long time ago, because they were not built or tested to Australian Design Rules, didn't stop me fitting them to someone else's roadcar that i was fixing though, is this still the case?, wouldn't want to run into a Ferrari and then have your claim rejected due to car being a non - compliance, Colin.

[Craig C]

My understanding of the legality issue was having the ADR designation marked on the hose.  They get around this now by putting a plastic coating over the braided bits so they can be stamped with all the designations.

I went for them on the front because my original ones on the Spider cracked with fatigue, i am assuming from the wheels turning and putting stress on the hose.  I went for braided becasue I assume they will be more durable.

[alfagtv58]

This is more about legality of braided lines, not the road vs track argument.  Take this as what it is....my research, from a numpty on the internet, not actual legal advice!

The old ADR7 was the rule that stated that any brake lines had to have an ADR approved sheath near the fitting, I think many years ago there was little (zero?) manufacturers that produced a braided brake line with an ADR approved sheath.  This ADR7 rule is now obsolete.

http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/motor/design/adr_online.aspx
Refer to ADR 7.

The quote there is "This standard ceased to have effect for new vehicles as from 9 December 2003, the requirements have been incorporated in ADR 42/"

ADR 42 can be found here
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2011C00102/Html/Text#_TOC177461829

Refer sect.15, it states in there "must conform to SAA, SAE, BS, JIS, DIN, ISO or ECE Standards, or FMVSS 106 Brake Hoses".

Sooooo....as long as the brake lines you buy conform to one of those standards, you can legally fit them now.

At least thats my interpretation. 

[ItalCarGuy]

Well I just checked the ones (Goodridge) that Classic Alfa stock and they are Australian compliant

http://www.johnstamnas.com/products/brakelines.html

[Fast Eddie]

Okay, so they are legal but as Phil says the real purpose of this thread was the value in fitting them?

The firewall flex issue may impact the servo but not the flexible rubber line between the fixed steel line and the caliper surely?
So, if anything taking a little flex out by fitting braided lines will improve the overall system be removing a portion of this flex...

[Sheldon McIntosh]

I think that by replacing the old lines with either original or braided you'll get a huge improvement, peace of mind etc.  Braided will give a tiny bit more surety at the pedal, last longer, cost bugger-all more.  No-brainer in my opinion.  While you're under the rear-end I would take off the calipers and re-build them.  They'll go eventually, may-as-well do it all at once.

[MD]

The standard transaxle brake pedal goes from basic mush to major mush without serious mods.

You can expect major improvment ONLY if you :-

1 Eliminate the booster and transfer bar.
2 Install a pedal box brace.
3 Install a minimum 8mm thick pedal lever (minimum fulcrum ratio 6.5:1).
4 Fit braided lines

If that is not you, learn to live with major to minor mush.Tinkering around the edges is just that.

[Duk]

What I fealt are the relevant points from the Autospeed article:

"The most widely publicised advantage of braided stainless steel brake lines over conventional rubber hoses is reduced bulging when heavy brake force is applied."

"Unfortunately, we have yet to see any documented evidence to support these claims – so we asked Maltech to compare the distortion and bulging of rubber brake hoses and braided stainless hoses using their pressure test machine."

"Note that these tests were conducted with the brake hoses pressurised to 3500 psi, which is considerably more than you'll generate in a car – David says you might generate 1500 psi pressure in a hard brake application. This means the hoses will expand more in our tests than in a real-world application."

"......the first hose we tested was an old and worn rubber hose (which appears to be the original part from a '65 Ford Mustang). In static conditions, this hose had an OD of 10.76mm and, when pressurised, it expanded to 11.02mm. An increase of 2.4 percent.

Next, we tested a brand new rubber hose. The new hose had a 10.47mm OD which expanded to 10.65mm when pressurised. An increase of 1.7 percent.

The final test was a new braided steel brake line. In static conditions, the braided line had an OD of 6.45mm and expanded to 6.49mm when pressurised. An increase of less than 1 percent."

Now I'm not saying not to use them, but even if you were able to eliminate all of the mechanical and structural flex in the chassis and the linkages, there is still a questionable increase in 'performance'.
There should be a longevity benefit as PTFE/Teflon is pretty well impervious to any hydrocarbon it's likely to come into contact with in car usage and ozone.

[MD]

Duk, that's a helpful bit of info.

There is also another part of the story. We all like to use genuine Alfa parts especially for critical applications  like brake hoses. Whenever I buy a second hand Alfa, the very first thing I do is rebuild the entire brake system from cups to pads. The last 20 year old Alfetta I acquired fell victim to new GENUINE Alfa brake hoses.

I changed the original ones in the belief the being 20 years old, it was prudent to change them so one could say that the entire brake system was reliable in equal proportions. There was no visual indication of the original lines being damaged or otherwise suspect. I just supposed that there might be some material change of state over that time and so erring on the side of caution was the pragmatic thing to do.

I fitted new genuine brake hoses.

Within six months of use, they came off and  I fitted locally custom made rubber hoses made to the Australian Standards. Why?

Because after only six months of use, the new genuine brake hoses had that many cracks on them as not to be trustworthy.

So what's the problem? The problem is the same problem as the driveline donuts. Sitting on the shelf for the last half century or the product made under license from el cheapo manufacturer that puts a label on the parts and presto it's a good as the original part. Well that just isn't so and the trouble is you never know what your are getting, Alfa packaging or not.

You can probably tel from the tone of this post that I am still pissed off.

..and here's one for the books.

My wife once had a brand new Daihatsu. The manual for the car prescribed a change of brake hoses very 18 months. !!!!  Make of that what you will.

[wankski]

isn't there also an argument that the steel braided lines can obscure damage to the line...

eg, MD could eyeball cracks in the rubber hose - but that would not be possible w/ the braided one?

not sure the difference in cost for the 116 but for the 932 it's substantial... the oem rubber lines cost bugger all... like 6 quid ea... the SS braided kit starts at about 100quid...

then you have potential insurance issues if an obstinate insurer says you ought have listed your car as having modified brakes etc...

thanks for posting the autospeed article... it has convinced me for my needs/purposes i will stick to oem... my car is 100k kms and 6yo... i might swap the hoses when i do the discs and pads - may hand it over to the dealer to do the hoses and fluid as i really can't be bothered bleeding!!