• NAXJA is having its 18th annual March Membership Drive!!!
    Everyone who joins or renews during March will be entered into a drawing!
    More Information - Join/Renew
  • Welcome to the new NAXJA Forum! If your password does not work, please use "Forgot your password?" link on the log-in page. Please feel free to reach out to [email protected] if we can provide any assistance.

Quick Q on brake hard line length

Matthew Currie

NAXJA Member #760
Hope I'll be forgiven for not searching, but I'm about to go off and do something else....


My son's 96 (4.0, 5 speed, no ABS) has bust the main front-to-rear brake line, and I'd like to help him get it back together. Ordinarily I'd get under with my double flare tool and splice in a piece, but he's 70 miles away, it's down in the single digits cold, and his Jeep is outdoors in the snow, so I'm trying to minimize the time taken rolling around in freezing slush. So, I though I'd just buy the whole line from Jeep, but they don't stock it any more, it seems. Does anybody here have a reasonably accurate measurement for the length of the whole line? I.E. from proportioning valve back to rear axle rubber line. If I get within a few inches we can piece together a line out of three or so lengths with unions.
 
Im pretty sure it's a little over 80". I can't believe I don't remember after putting them in four XJ's:roflmao:

I did 6ft line, 20" line and that 3" adapter to the prop valve. Flaring them yourself is the way to do it. I need to get me a kit. Rust sure does kill these lines.
 
I did it with a 72" segment and some other parts. I forget the exact length. I like to use preflared sections and invert flare unions from autozone for everything, starting at the end most likely to be corroded, and work my way back toward the end least likely to be corroded, where the custom-length piece goes.

Sounds like the same weather I've done brake lines in before. A couple big sheets of corrugated cardboard and a piece of painters plastic sheeting do wonders for sanity and survival.

Remember that the wacky union a few inches from the prop valve on the factory line is an invert flare on one side and a bubble flare on the other, the only reason they put that there is so that the line from the union to the rear brakes is the same whether the jeep had ABS or not, while a short segment in the engine compartment is different for ABS vs non-ABS. Gotta love parts stocking logistics decisions, you can simply eliminate it and save yourself the headache of doing a bubble flare.
 
Man, if I lived in the rusty part of the country I would invest in some stainless steel brake lines!
 
Thanks, folks. I'll work on a layout, or pass on the info if he wants to beat me to it. I like the idea of a 6 and 2. If it's a bit long you can always loop it at the front end. But I don't look forward to this job in this season.

I might agree on the stainless lines, except that the XJ in question is a terrible rust bucket already, and I expect this is its last winter. Aside from disappeared rocker panels, huge floor holes, and a very bad quarter panel (long-ago collision repair without undercoat), we're getting a bit worried about the leaf spring mounts. No point in over-designing the brake lines, then.

For myself, since brake lines are so cheap and I don't mind the work so much, I simply go with spliced-together lines and unions, which make subsequent repairs very easy.
 
Back
Top