I was just curious about this... I am replacing my brake lines w/ Goodridge and I stripped the right front fitting getting the stock ones off. I have already ordered the factory line cause it was only $15, but I had the idea pop in my head to replace the factory hard lines running from the master cylinder to the calipers with high quality braided lines.

I know I know, the first thought is they are made of flexible materials and they should be more likely to flex and expand under pressure. But with the hoses out on the market now, aren't they just as strong as their counterparts? The second is cost. I am sure it will cost a few extra bucks to go this route, but it would look damn good in the engine bay, along with the stainless lines to the catch can, and power steering, and... see where I'm going with this.

I did search this and found some BMW race guys run braided for their entire brake system and didn't seem to notice any issues over the hard lines. I want to get the Evo community's take on this topic. Has anyone done this before?

 

The hard line can have a tendency to break due to vibrations or excessive movement, where the ss line will flex more. That is one main difference. Thats why you wont see a hard line too often for the brake lines (attached to the caliper) . There usually is some flexible rubber line to the caliper to allow room for movement. The hard line works great for oem for packaging reasons. You can route the lines up in the frame and secure them and they wont flop around. I dont think you will gain anything by switching to a ss braided line over a hard line other than you can now route your new lines in a different manner if you so wish.

 

good insight. any other thoughts?

 

Doesn't seem worth it for how much it will cost you and I don't see you gaining any braking performance either.

But it is your car and your money, if you really want the look that bad go for it. I'd personally just paint them black or something so they are less noticeable.

 

Flexible SS lines are more likely to fail than the tube lines that are in stock. The tubes also do not expand. SS lines do still expand. The purpose of SS lines is to act as a flexible link in the braking hydraulic system. I don't think that it would be worth it to change out all of the tubing with hoses. Look at airplane hydraulic (both force application and braking systems) and you will see that there is a combination of tubing and Kevlar hoses.

 

If you mean you rounded the nut, that is almost a universal result. Just reassemble using a tiny pipe wrench.

 

The main reason *not* to swap any of the hard lines for anything else is that the distances covered by the hard lines are very different. Therefore, if you swapped the hard lines for flexible lines, the amount of "give" would differ between the wheels, making the car outrageously dangerous to drive. This problem would also arise - and might even be worse - if you swapped out the hard line to only one wheel.

There's a reason that the flexible part of the line is the same length on the right and the left (and, on many high-performance cars, the same front and back, too). Don't mess with this.