The brake line that runs from that distribution box at the front of engine to the rearend has a leak in it, and the brakes feel REALLY scary. This is my girlfriends T/a, my iroc is broken, installed a new transmission and it immediately crapped out, so since I just wasted $500 on all that, I'm completely out of money, and I'm starting back to work tommorow, I'm pretty much screwed. My firebird is not street legal, and now my girlfriends T/a has this broken brake line! What do I do? The line is like 10 feet long, all the way from the rearend to the engine. I was thinking about just blocking it off temporarily so I could drive it to work, can I do this?

 

so you mean it's broken near the combo valve?

well...i have no idea what they are but some people talk about "compression fittings" to fix these things.

Personally i think if the line just rusted out or something you might be out of luck with the compression fitting.

I guess the cheapest way would be to remove the entire line and take it to a place that can bend up new tubing for you. look for a "tubes and hoses" franchise around. Usually they're in speed shops, or machine shops.

You could buy a little cheap tubing bender and a lenth of tubing and try to bend it up yourself....but i'll tell you right off the bat that it's HARD.

It takes a lot of practice to do right. You may not even have the patience to do it right before monday comes around.

 

you could probably get away with just the front brakes (cap it off at the proportioning valve) I know of people driving with only front brakes. That is what I would do in your situation and believe me ive been in worse situations than that. If you kill yourself or wreck dont blame me though, just some advice from another po- man

 

why don't you just replace the line? most likely you won't be able to buy a replacement line long enough so you'd have to use connectors, but that really helps since you don't have the full length to work with at one time. don't even have to remove old line if you don't want to, just run new piece next to it

 

You will need a couple of tools...tubing cutter and flaring tool (one that has the dies for double flaring/inverted, forget what it's called).

You can either repiece the whole line, or fix where it's broken.

As ede says, you can crawl under the car, measure what you need, and piece it together with different lengths. You'll also need a union to connect each line.

Don't use a compression fitting on the brake line, it will leak and it's not safe. Compressin fittings usually are rated around 250-300PSI, I believe the brake system can get upwards 1000+psi.

 

you could always cut the bad piece out, and patch a new length in for the rusted portion

 

Stuff rusts in Tucson AZ?