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MG MGA - Stainless steel brake pipe installation

Hi people;
It's a long story but, after insane expense and months of stupifying hassle, I have a full set of stainless steel clutch and brake pipes pre-formed, correctly this time, and ready to install.
My concern is the proper seating of the stainless steel pipes to whatever they're mated to. It didn't occur to me, duh, that stainless steel is pretty hard and I could use some feedback, advise, and direction, if there's any out there, about how to approach screwing down the pipe ends to the brake calipers, 5-way fitting, clutch cylinder, wheel cylinders, etc.
Concerns like how many flats should I turn the ends after contact is made, (or what's a reasonable inch/lb torque) before risking damage to pipe ends or whatever they're mated to?
Will the stainless steel mate ok with the softer metal of the 5-way? Or the (aluminum?) clutch cylinder?
It's probably easy as hell to do this right, but this is a first for me and, after spending a couple week's pay and as many months downtime on these pipes, any suggestions or insights that could help avoid screwing things up are welcomed.
Thanks!



L.R. deOlazarra

Stainless steel may be corrosion resistant, tough, gummy, and gall up on cutting tools, but it is not necessarily hard. Adding a touch of nickel to steel to make it stainless does not change the mechanical characteristics much. Just treat it the same as normal steel brake pipes.
Barney Gaylord

Rick,

Seating the new lines is pretty straight forward. As you tighten them you will first feel resistance when they hit bottom but are not fully seated. As you tighten them a bit more the bubble flair will deform slightly and seat in the wheel cylinder or fitting. It doesn’t take much and you’ll know from feel when you have seated the line. Further tightening will only risk stripping the fitting or twisting the brake line. The latter is probably easier to do with the cupro-nickel lines than steel. Make sure that you have new or re-annealed copper washers for the banjo fittings. Maybe have the shop make up a dummy line that is only a few inches long with a bubble flair on one end so you can try one before diving in on the real thing.

My conversation to front disks was not without its pratfalls but I have been very pleased with the new brakes. Making up my own lines was more of a challenge than I had anticipated. The cheap bubble flair tool I bought would twist the line as the bubble end was form thus wreaking the flair. I eventually solved the problem by placing a ball bearing (well actually a steel ball from the kids Pachinko machine) between the flair die and the compression screw so that the die would not turn (held in place with a wrench). The two nuts in the picture are just spacers. Worked like a charm.

Keep plugging away. At least your climate will give you some decent chances for some top-down drives. We had hail and heavy rain today.

Cheers, John



jbackman

For me, the most difficult (not a lot of room) connections to make were at the brake light switch. Even with the toe board and floor boards removed, it was tough to get to and each line had to be "tweaked" in situ for its final orientation at the switch to avoid cross threading the connection. Good luck.
Don
Don Carlberg

I am SO grateful for this forum and the people that contribute to it...
Thank you for your feedback.
-Rick
L.R. deOlazarra

This thread was discussed between 20/10/2012 and 21/10/2012

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