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Stainless steel hard brake lines

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:23 pm
by pryantcc
Hi,
Does anyone know a U.K. Supplier of stainless brake pipe?
Thanks,
Paul.

Re: Stainless steel hard brake lines

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 6:43 pm
by JPB
Apologies for this not being an actual answer, but why stainless steel? Kunifer (Cupro-Nickel) pipe is used as O/E by some manufacturers such as Toyota (in domestic market models mostly, but some UK cars make do with plastic coated mild steel that always rusts where there's a very small uncoated section entering a union..), Aston-Martin and most of the small volume manufacturers too, its behaviour is much like mild steel in this application, so using Kunifer won't require pigtails, extra attachment points or any of the other disadvantages that copper (now mercifully illegal in many countries for brake pipes) or some "stainless" steels bring with them, especially when some eBay sellers can't or won't answer the question of which grade of stainless their product uses. Some stainless steels are fine for brake pipes, but even in the rarified world of top flight concours d'etat competition, Kunifer is accepted in most series even when mild steel was originally specified.

So in case you want to buy some to try, make sure that the stock you buy has been heat treated to make it sufficiently soft, but bear in mind that the woeful quality and absence of any characteristics of what we'd recognise as a stainless steel are just as likely to be seen in brake pipe as in exhaust systems, many of which are ferritics that just take a little longer to rot away.

Re: Stainless steel hard brake lines

Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:59 pm
by pryantcc
I like your response, John, even though it didn't contain an answer :-) It's mostly the appearance of stainless that I like and not much to do with its other properties. Most of the pipe I can find (mostly in the USA) is 304 stainless if they quote the stainlessness at all. So, it's not super-duper stainless. I guess it's a trade off between anti corrosion and hardness. It is all double annealed though which is supposed to make it soft enough.

Re: Stainless steel hard brake lines

Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 2:37 am
by GHT
JPB wrote:
Tue Dec 19, 2017 6:43 pm
So in case you want to buy some to try, make sure that the stock you buy has been heat treated to make it sufficiently soft, but bear in mind that the woeful quality and absence of any characteristics of what we'd recognise as a stainless steel are just as likely to be seen in brake pipe as in exhaust systems, many of which are ferritics that just take a little longer to rot away.
So cars don't use hydraulic hoses anymore? Well what will they think of next?