StanceWorks: Complete Brake Line Replacement – Stainless Hard Lines & Soft Lines – K24 Ferrari

StanceWorks Video Transcript

Boy do i have my work cut out for me i’ve got to figure out how to make an episode about brake lines interesting because that’s what we’re focused on today we’re going to re-plumb the entirety of the honda swap ferrari project we’re going to go from the

Master cylinders all the way to the brake calipers and i want to replace everything we’re going to install all new stainless hard lines and fittings we’re going to do this job the best way possible and i’m going to tell you guys literally everything that i know about

Plumbing brakes this should be a good one if you like those techie nerdy deep dive episodes and it should be a good skill set that you can use on a project of your own so let’s dive into it in order to work on the brakes we’ve got

To get the car up on the lift and believe it or not the ferrari hasn’t been on the lift since we started this project the last time it was up here was when we pulled the factory v8 out of the car and it’s been on the dolly ever since

Unfortunately getting the car up on the lift was a crash course and figuring out how to pull it off anybody with a low car is familiar with the song and dance of using jacks to get it high enough to clear the lift arms and hopefully once this car runs i can

Simply drive it up onto two by fours to get it high enough because otherwise this is gonna be my future for years to come it took about a half hour but after a bit of work i did get it up onto the lift arms and into the air for the very

First time giving me the opportunity to see underneath this car for the first time since we started this build obviously most people won’t see this car from this angle but it was really cool to see the turbo and exhaust setup hanging underneath the back of the car

And of course the huge wheel and tire package under the fenders but because we’ve got so much horsepower and so much rubber underneath the car today we’re going to focus on making sure we can bring both of those to a halt for a brake setup we’re using ap

Racing’s radical pro 5000r setup a six-piston front and a four-piston rear and now we need to plumb it into place now obviously the ferrari does have brake lines from the factory and we could use the old ones if we simply wanted to adapt to them but as far as

We’re taking this build i want everything to be new including the brake lines underneath the car so the first step in our process is to get all of the old equipment and hardware pulled out Even the hard lines passing through the center of the chassis need to go but we’re going to replace everything with stainless hardware and fittings and i’ve got a small assortment of what we’re going to be using sitting here on the table between these and the 50 or so feet of

Stainless hardline that i have to work with we’re going to replace everything front to rear in order to do that though we’re going to need a lot of different tools so let’s talk about them The first tool on our list is a brake line straightener and this unique looking tool is actually quite simple in principle it’s merely a system of grooved wheels meant to straighten out that coil of brake line that we saw a moment ago it’s adjustable so that it can be used

With multiple sizes of brake line and of course multiple material types too in our case stainless steel before knowing about the existence of a line straightener i had always stuck to purchasing straight lengths of line i had assumed the only way to straighten a reel was by hand slowly and methodically

But it turns out with a line straightener you can get an incredible outcome as long as you’re patient and willing to do a little bit of fine tuning you can also straighten any length of line that you’d like another plus and as said the outcome is more or less indistinguishable from a manufactured

Straight section of line so now we’ve got something to work with but we need to cut it and if you’ve ever worked with brake line maybe you’ve seen one of these a traditional line cutter they work great on steel line but if you’re going to upgrade to stainless

You’ll probably find that it’s quite tough to use so instead i would cut it i used my band saw but you could use a cut off wheel as well although it is going to leave the end of your hose a bit messed up so with a simple file clean

Out the inside and then i like to use a deburring wheel on the end of my angle grinder in order to clean up the outside and make sure it’s free of any imperfections with both ends of our straight line segment cleaned up we’re ready to actually start forming some brake lines

We’re going to need a bender i’ve got two of them here but the one that i’m going to be using for the most part today is this small 3 16 fragola bender it works in much the same way as a large scale roll cage tubing bender by

Clamping the tube on one end and pulling it around a mandrel this results in nice pretty deformation free bends but before we actually make any hard lines we need to get some equipment mounted starting with our tilt and fluid reservoir for both brake master cylinders and the clutch master cylinder

For this bracket we’re going to knock out something really quick and simple there’s no reason to over complicate it a simple sheet aluminum bracket with a dimple die in the middle for added strength should more than do the trick i inserted some rivnut so we don’t have

To reach the back side to tighten everything down and with that we are ready for installation as a bonus because we’re attaching three quarter inch stainless steel hard lines to this any flimsiness in the bracket will be taken up by the hard lines themselves and at this point it’s time to finally

Start making them now be warned this is a process of installation and removal rinse and repeat over and over again until you get everything exactly the way you want it and if you’re striving for perfection trust me you’re gonna have a lot of scrap but that’s okay i messed up my fair

Share of tubing too eventually though you’ll get the tube lined up just the way you want it and that means it’s time to flare it you’ve probably seen one of these flaring tools before and while i will say that it can work if you need it to i

Would skip this tool entirely it’s definitely not going to work well on stainless steel instead i would opt for one of these you can get them from summit from eastwood or from probably anywhere else and at 150 bucks or so i’d say it’s well worth it even if you’re only doing one

Brake job because it can do single and double flares it’s a very capable tool but before you use it make sure you put your swivel and nut on your hard line before you flare the end of it you’re gonna forget and then you’ll have to

Remake a line because you had to cut the flare off in order to get the swivel on and hate yourself speaking from experience now you might notice i’m using a washer to set the depth of the tube this isn’t always necessary but for the single flare application that we’re doing i

Find it very helpful in preventing the stainless steel tubing from tearing at the flare as you can see we just flared this line in real time and it turned out beautifully with no headache well worth it for this tool now the only drawback to this type of

Flare tool is that you can’t flare the end of a tube if it’s too close to a bend you already have there you have to plan ahead you need the depth of this die between the flare and the bend otherwise you can’t clamp it so if you

Need to bend really close to the end of your tube you need to flare it first and then bend it which sounds easy on the surface but usually you want all your bends in place before you flare it can make it kind of tough so i wrapped up the hard lines on the

Top side of the car and moved to the bottom we need a destination for our hard lines so i’m adding some bulkhead fittings to the chassis that we can connect our soft lines to at the control arm the exterior port is mounted nice and low out of the way of any steering

Components where something might get snagged and on the inside of the chassis they’re pointed up towards our master cylinders for nice and easy routing now to be clear the hard-lining process can be a simple one these lines can be bent by hand if you’re not worried about

Aesthetics and you could knock an entire car out in a matter of hours if you’re so inclined but i’m including this long time lapse clip to show just how much effort i put in to getting these lines to look the part although it’s unlikely anyone will ever

Look underneath my car and admire my brake lines i’ll know that they’re there and i want them to look good now i’ve got a little bit of tidying left to do maybe some minute adjustments but i’m happy with the way this stuff’s turning out i ran out of hard line to

Finish the final one from the reservoir to the master cylinder but overall we’re shaping up we’ve got nicely formed lines that dodge important parts of the chassis and everything else flows nicely with the designs that are already present well except for that clutch line i’m still working on

But with the front hard lines done we’re ready for the soft line portion the line that will extend from the chassis out to the brake caliper itself this needs to be soft so that it can articulate with the suspension and of course has some flexibility for movement as the steering operates

I went to my local hose shop and had them knock out some soft lines and we are now ready for installation now i’m excited about this i had to get a little bit creative for this to work but i made the soft line lengths for all

Four corners of the car front and rear the exact same length now that’s really only possible if you have some leeway on your hard lines it’s not going to work for every car but the upshot of this is the fact that i only have to take one spare hose with me

To the racetrack it’ll work on any corner of the car every soft line is identical the fittings are the same everything don’t have to have multiple spares don’t have to figure out what hose goes where if i take these things off and toss them in a pile i don’t have to remember where

They went everything’s the same it really simplifies the whole system it’ll make it a lot more simple in my notes for this car if i have to look something up later soft line brake line 22 inches simple as that so let’s get these soft lines mounted routing is simple from the banjo bolt

Through the middle of the control arm and to the bulkhead we’ll secure it with a zip tie for the time being until we can get some proper metal tabs welded into place later down the line i checked for articulation and everything looks good under travel and

Steering so we should be in shape to start filling with fluid now some of you guys are going to be wondering about soft lining your entire car can you do it is it safe so on and so forth it’s a big debate on the internet all i can do is throw my

Anecdotal experience in i have soft lined complete vehicles before some people will say you cannot soft line an entire car that you’ll get spongy breaks and that the lines will actually wiggle as you press the brakes because of the amount of give in the system as a whole and all sorts of other

Stuff i have not experienced that myself do you have to attach the brake line every two inches like some people suggest no not in my experience at least the model is soft lined my previous hot rod is soft lined i’ve done other cars that way as well

It works and it works fine but it’s not going to have as firm of a pedal feel as hard lines and there are other drawbacks to it but it is a very easy way to do it sometimes it works a lot better if your spatial constraints are that way and

There are race teams and race cars that are completely soft lined so anybody that says that it’s the wrong way to do it i wouldn’t really listen to them but again for this application i think hard lines make a lot more sense and i think it’ll look a lot better so we’re going

To go with it now i have a bit of work left to do on this thing before i have the brake lines finished up obviously but as promised that’s literally everything that i know about brake plumbing and brake lines hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode

I know it was a lot of information to take in but i had fun making it and we are one step closer to having this car driving hopefully by the end of the weekend i will have the brake fluid in this car have the lines finished up and

Have bled the brakes so we can actually cross it off and hopefully before too long we will have this thing fired up and driving under its own power subscribe if you guys haven’t i don’t want you guys to miss the episodes as we get this thing closer and closer and of

Course once we take it for that first drive leave a like if you liked the episode and i’ll catch you guys next week thanks as always for the support You