Brake pipe flaring.

Iamzod

Iamzod

Iamzod

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I am in the middle of replacing the entire braking system on one of my cars with Kunifer pipe with braided hoses for the chassis to strut & rear axle however it's seeming tricky to flare the pipes so I was hoping a few of you could review what I've done.

It is a Clarke pipe flaring kit but the instructions are useless as following them just destroys the pipe as you can see on the right side of image 1.

This is what i'm getting-







As you can see they aren't coming out "clean", but will the fixing them in place using the correct fittings still give me a good seal with what I have here once it's all torqued up properly?

I don't want to mess with the end of the pipe I've been shaping as there are quite a few bits shaped like this which I really don't want to mess up and have to do again-

 
You probably have a couple of things at conspiring against you:
1) Those cheap spit die tools are pretty nasty, they don't often give good results with kunifer or steel IME (work ok on the softer copper pipes). You need to get the exposed pipe length set exactly right and have the end cut very cleanly + some luck.

2) Did you lubricate the pipe and dies with a smear of red rubber grease prior to making the flare?

A flare as badly made as the (right hand) one in the first pic is unlikely to seal well, and over-tightening the tube nut to compensate is not a good idea. These are brakes, you want the best seal you can get.

Do you have the proper pipe cutting tool? You waste relatively little pipe cutting off a bad flare with one of these, so always start with the pipe a little longer than you need, the extra length can easily be accommodated within the bends etc. if the first flare works out well.
 
Yes I have a proper pipe cutter, it's giving me some nice cuts, the pipe bender I have also appears pretty useful too.

It's the flaring kit that is the problem, i'm half tempted to return it.

But no I didn't use any grease, it doesn't say to in the instructions, I need to get this right though as I have 16 ends to flare.
 
Gaverick said:
Those flaring kits are useless, I struggled for years with one. Get one of these (http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=172029798711&alt=web) best money I've spent. Perfect flare everytime and you can use them on the car also.
Click to expand...

Yep, that is by far the best type of flaring tool for the average DIYer. The bench/vice mounted ones are quicker and easier to use, but they cost a fortune (and not useful for flaring pipes on the car).

A small smear of red rubber grease to lubricate the die helps IME, but don't use any other type of grease.
 
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Agreed, I am a professional race car engineer and even so spent years struggling with the small El Cheapo flaring tools as i was too tight to buy something exotic for the occasions I needed one. After the embarrassment of a customer telling me he couldn't bear to watch me fiddling with "that toy" and him giving me a proper flaring tool from his company's product range I find I get perfect flares with minimal effort. I should have invested in a decent one years ago!


But as Dogbreath says, bench ones can't be used under the car, so the Gaverick link to the Ebay one is a good compromise for general usage.
 
I would think there's no reason not to use a different grease, and probably good reasons TO use a different grease. "Red Rubber" grease is actually brake fluid in a very viscous form and is intended for the assembly of the "rubber" parts of brake hydraulics. Perhaps the poster is thinking of grease contamination of the brake fluid, but washing the flare off with brake cleaner would mitigate that issue if a high pressure grease was used.
 
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