- Joined
- Mar 19, 2018
- Posts
- 301
- Reaction score
- 439
- Location
- South East Wisconsin
- Ram Year
- 2018
- Engine
- 3.6
My son has a 2004 Ram 1500 with dragging front brakes. The truck has lived it's entire life in SE Wisconsin so it has some amazing rust. We started this morning to replace both front calipers and flex lines. The drivers side has a junction bracket for the tube nuts that include tubes nuts for the rear. The coating on the brake line that goes along the frame under the bracket had a bare rusty spot right on the 90 degree bend. When we got a 12mm crow foot on the tube nut, the line immediately started to twist and leak from the rusty spot. We were able to remove the tube nut. The tube nut above that tube nut came off uneventfully. This was when we decided to leave the rear tube nuts alone and cut the bracket. We then decided to use a union and splice the missing section with copper nickel 3/16 brake line. The original 90 degree bend was impossible to duplicate so we tried to do a few trial bends and came up with the below pic.
We made the flares with a Mastercool hydraulic flare tool using tube nuts I had left over from my Neons. The passenger side came apart easily. New calipers are on and lines are bled. Nice solid pedal and no leaks. I really doubt it would be possible to get a prebent replacement brake line. Hope this helps anyone with a similar situation.
We made the flares with a Mastercool hydraulic flare tool using tube nuts I had left over from my Neons. The passenger side came apart easily. New calipers are on and lines are bled. Nice solid pedal and no leaks. I really doubt it would be possible to get a prebent replacement brake line. Hope this helps anyone with a similar situation.
