Me again with this '88 Civic project. This car has been parked for about 8 months now, and a mechanic recently told me that this is very bad for the brake lines. He said I should replace all the steel lines to prevent problems down the road. This involves a lot of extra work though; is it really necessary?
I would inspect the brake lines for rust/corrosion damage, not due to the 8 months the car has been sitting, but due to whatever the brake lines have been exposed to in the last 20+ years! On the other hand, rubber brake hoses should be replaced due to age. You'll also want to flush the brake fluid to get rid of moisture.
I'd certainly change the brake fluid before putting it on the road, and I'd look at the fluid. The fluid is hydroscopic and it will absorb water if the system isn't perfectly sealed. If you drive it a lot, the heat of operation will drive off a lot of the water. If you don't drive it, it won't, and the lines will tend to rust inside.
I don't think the Civic is particularly prone to brake line problems, but i'd want to inspect the system and change the fluid before putting it on the road.
After 20 years, though, it may well be time to change the brake lines, especially if you're in a place where there are general rust problems with cars. They might be fine, too. If the fluid comes out clear, and not brown or cloudy, I wouldn't worry. If it looks nasty, I'd worry.
Also, of course, if you have the undercarriage all apart anyway and you're cutting into the underside to fix rust damage, you might as well just go ahead and replace the lines near where you are working with stainless steel and be done with it. Because sooner or later they _will_ go bad and it's easier to do it when everything is apart than to have to deal with it a decade down the road.
--scott
Sounds like bullshit to me.
Brake lines only corrode from the outside, IME. Change the brake fluid and inspect the hoses. Unless you live where salt is used extensively in the winter, the brake lines will most probably be alright.
Ulf
"Chris F." wrote in news:49b3f75c$0$5453$ snipped-for-privacy@news.aliant.net:
What *kind* of steel? stainless steel doesn't rust as I'm sure you know. You do *not* want to replace stainless steel lines with *anything* else. Sounds like a "sales gimick".
Maybe this is where the difference comes in, because I don't consider
21 years to be all that old a car, and if I have a new car I want to maintain it with the expectation that it will last longer than that.That said.... you never know what is going to happen. I bought a BMW that had been horribly treated by the previous owners, then left on a dealer's back lot with the trunk open for five years. When I drained the transmission fluid, it was white and foamy. But when I flushed the brake fluid, it was nice and clean with no discoloration. I did have to replace a number of brake lines due to external rust, but when I cut them open they were nice and clean inside. So here was thirty-year-old fluid (because I _know_ these bozos never changed anything on any schedule), doing its job perfectly well.
On the other hand, I had a '72 Corolla that, after only 15 years of service, had a sticky caliper. Pulled the cylinder and it was full of all kinds of brown gunk. Purged the system and got an amazing amount of crap out of there. Started changing the fluid every couple of years and had no issues.
Yeah, I know, it's anecdotal evidence, but these are both good examples of when things worked and when things didn't, and neither one of these was really predictable.
It could be, I don't know the inhibitor chemistry in these things.
Dunno, the thing about all of this testing is that it's easier just to change it every now and then than to test it. On the other hand, moisture testing is easy to do and copper testing isn't so easy.
That's basically the way I think about it. If the system is perfectly sealed, there's no real need to change it, but I worry about how well sealed it really is.
I'm currently having an inexplicable clutch issue that is clearly related to the hydraulics. Changed out _everything_ over the course of a couple years, including both cylinders and all the piping, and I thought it had gone away until the warm weather started up and now it's back again. Either air is mysteriously getting into the system somewhere, or there's a particle somewhere in the system that is moving around. I've flushed everything several times now.... may be related to fluid breakdown, then again maybe it's not...
--scott
Is this a project car or a beater? On an 88 that's seen 20 winters with lots of snow and salt and stuff, the brake lines are probably pretty much compressed rust. My winter beater's a 90 Beretta and the lines are pretty much done - I had to splice one in recently after it sprung a leak and the rest of the lines all pretty much look like crap.
Brake lines are cheap. Replacing them on a project car = good idea and way easier to run the lines when there's less stuff in the way. Preemptively replacing all the brake lines on a beater = waste of money. Either replace them when they burst and risk an accident, or find the rusty parts and splice in new lines (you can flare the line right on the car) or don't drive a beater.
(I had to drive home using nothing but the e-brake when the line blew. You can do it, but it's nerve wracking as hell and you have to leave a shitload of room. the car still had front brakes but was leaking bad, I stopped for more fluid on the way home. I probably should have taken a cab and gone back with my truck and trailer, but I'm too stubborn.)
Ray
Do you believe this car never had any brake work that involve bleeding the brakes in 30 years?
The original poster's mechanic is correct to suggest changing the brake lines. Regular use of the vehicle seems to help protect against corrosion to brake lines to some extent. It is not uncommon to have the brake lines pop after an car has been left sitting for a year. If you replace just the on that goes first then another will let loose.
Clutches are a little different than brakes. The way brakes are designed it isn't likely to ever get negative pressure in the system.
-jim
Nope your wrong. Brake lines do definitely corrode from the inside when a vehicle is left to sit for a long period of time. The same is true of wheel cylinders. The pitting and corrosion is always at the bottom of a wheel cylinder and/or always at the lowest point in stretch of brake line.
-jim
I may be wrong, Scott, but I dont believe there is any corrosion inhibitor in the brake fluid. These polyols are not very corrosive against steel or copper, unless wet or contaminated.
( Typically when they come out of the reactor, they will contain less than 0.02% water. But they will absorb water for quite a while. That is why similar compounds are used to remove water from natural gas (in a cloud point unit, or gas dehydrator) before it enters the pipelines. )
The common ones are, however, miscible with water in any concentration, but that doesnt mean that they will continue to absorb water at the same rate as they approach saturation.
Many of us have seen master cylinders and wheel cylinders destroyed by corrosion. Some of that has had to do with poor quality hard parts in the past.
Yes, this is clearly the case. Hopefully if the system stays sealed, the only water that gets absorbed is a tiny amount when the system is first filled.
But, if the system isn't completely sealed, it will absorb some amount of water and then saturate pretty quickly. Then it will stay in this state for years.
Yes, the severe service schedule on my '85 suggests doing it every five years. That sounds reasonable enough. You might get away with never doing it at all. Then again, you might not.
--scott
It may have been bled a few times, but from the condition of the pads and rotors the previous owners were not interested in doing any brake work they could avoid. A full fluid change is a bit more dramatic than a bleed but I agree that it's quite possible some fluid got exchanged now and then.
This is absolutely true.
This is also true. However, in this vehicle it all comes from the same reservoir... change one and you change the other.
--scott
On 9 Mar 2009 11:32:09 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
Though I don't do it, I sure would't argue against 5 years. There is a lot of conflicting info, and I haven't seen any analysis close to what you'll find on lube oil. My son has pulled apart a lot of failed brake components, and always finds the only serious corrosion is around the full circumference of the pistons where they travels on the seals. He considers every failure he has seen a seal failure, and attributes nothing to fluid, and everything to seal quality and the quality of the metals to resist corrosion and abrasion once the seals allow intrusion of moisture and grit. This makes sense to me, and the only way I can explain why my Celebrity went 14 years and 190k miles with no brake issues except pad/shoes and a set of rotors. I recall popping the MC lid only twice to look at the fluid level. OTOH, in looking about for this thread I saw Brembo caliper pistons badly corroded after about 36k miles. Think it's a Chrysler model forum.
--Vic
If they have been disconnected for a winter, discussion over, you must change them out. They will have rusted all to crap inside over the winter.
Mike
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