91 year old primary transportation.

Cvans

Cvans

Tractorologist
Senior Member
Member
Doug this ones for you.
Must be a bug going around. The brake line on the 97 f-150 rusted out and it's in the shop. Thursday wife came home and said the car is not shifting right and a warning light is on. Message on the dash said to get it to a service center as soon as possible and read owners manual. Read the book and called the dealer. He said not to drive it and call Lincoln. I did and they say the are sending out a truck at 10 am tomorrow. 2 pm and no truck so I call Lincoln again. Whoops they told the tow company 10 pm. :( I told them to come and get it and instead take it to Watertown as it's closer. That dealer tells me they don't have a loaner because they can't get new cars. SO! We are down to two vehicles. An 05' Escalade on which the Speedometer just quit working and June Bug (1930 Desoto). Never dreamed I'd be driving a 91 year old car as primary transportation. Come on June Bug you can do it.
 
Ford had a good idea that didn't turn out. They installed a rock guard on their brake lines but it instead collects dirt that causes the break lines to fail. I'm not going to put those back on. As you know I want to be driving this for another 60 years.
 
Only vehicle I ever had a brake line fail on was a ford truck. Reminded me of the old song that said stepping on the brake was like stepping on a plumb. Can't remember the song name or artist. Wolf creek pass may be.
Don
 
Currently ordering prebent stainless steel brake lines from a Michigan company for our 1993 Silverado we are going to start restoring next year. They all rust out. My FIL was a GM Exec back in the 50s and 60s, he told me they could of put stainless lines back in the 60s but that GM said it would not make people buy new vehicles if things didn't break down !
 
Brake lines are the worst job to me. I've done every line on my ranger in the last few years. My 04 ram had a soft line blow apart on the rear. Everything was so rusted I ended up having to do all the rear lines.

I cant bring myself to pay someone to do a job I can do myself even if I hate it. My car just ran out of power train warranty on the way to work this morning. About 4 months early. Guess any repairs needed before spring will be on me.
 
I have yet to own anything new enough to even have any warranty left.
When I got my then 3 year old Wrangler (closest to new I have ever had, was 23 years old when I sold it)
The sales idiot told me it had 3 months left on the factory warranty. It was way short going by miles.
Something I should have done before I bought it but once I bought it I called a parts counter buddy at a dealership and found out it was out of warranty by 3 months on account of time.
It ended up being moot as I never had an issue with it that would have been covered anyway until 130k or so after it would have ran out by mileage.
(Going on basic 3 yr/36k they all came with)
 
And yeah I have replaced more brake lines than I care to try to remember, I have multiple line flaring kits including a real expensive hydraulic one/ and more than a few tube bending tools.
It usually ain't so bad doing them on a lift but laying on my back, yeah those days they sucked.
I will say that GM didn't do anyone any favors when they put the ABS box basically under the driver's seat. And it seems they went to an even cheaper grade of tubing around the same time. I don't remember the old square body ones rusting as fast or the 88-98s rusting as fast as the 99-newer ones do. And the last couple of those I wound up dropping the gas tank to get them routed right, those were prebent kits I used on those trucks.

Not saying I didn't do brake lines on older trucks/ I did and still do.... But never did them, nowhere near as often as these newer ones.
On the Ford's the braided ones at the master cylinder love to leak right at the crimps where braided line goes to regular steel lines.
 
My 04 Avalanche has had a couple brake issues, on the rear. Lines rusted out mostly. Last time was the line from the front to the rear run inside the frame. Prior it was from the dividing block to both wheels, new pads, rotors, found U joints were about to start making noise, and holes rusted in the pumpkin cover. Wish those drive over car washes that sprayed up under the vehicle were tall enough for a pickup.
 
Toomanytoys84 said:
Brake lines are the worst job to me. I've done every line on my ranger in the last few years. My 04 ram had a soft line blow apart on the rear. Everything was so rusted I ended up having to do all the rear lines.

I cant bring myself to pay someone to do a job I can do myself even if I hate it. My car just ran out of power train warranty on the way to work this morning. About 4 months early. Guess any repairs needed before spring will be on me.
Click to expand...
They can program them to go bad after the warranty :eek:
 
Cvans said:
Doug this ones for you.
Must be a bug going around. The brake line on the 97 f-150 rusted out and it's in the shop. Thursday wife came home and said the car is not shifting right and a warning light is on. Message on the dash said to get it to a service center as soon as possible and read owners manual. Read the book and called the dealer. He said not to drive it and call Lincoln. I did and they say the are sending out a truck at 10 am tomorrow. 2 pm and no truck so I call Lincoln again. Whoops they told the tow company 10 pm. :( I told them to come and get it and instead take it to Watertown as it's closer. That dealer tells me they don't have a loaner because they can't get new cars. SO! We are down to two vehicles. An 05' Escalade on which the Speedometer just quit working and June Bug (1930 Desoto). Never dreamed I'd be driving a 91 year old car as primary transportation. Come on June Bug you can do it.
Click to expand...
Junebug can handle it Chris! Did your wife's ride get to the dealer so you know what's wrong with it?

I'm in the same boat except I'll be driving a "young" 66 year old truck. The Denali is not cooperating so it will still be disabled for a while. I will probably jinx myself, but I've never had a brake line rust out. The steel lines in the '55 are still original far as i know. Did replace all the flex lines of course, about 10 years ago. I've never tried to start the '55 when the low is in the teens either. Guess I'll find out in the morning how that goes. Hope the headlight switch works ok as I never got the new one installed yet!

Good luck, Chris!

DAC
 
So far going good. Made 2 trips to the lumber yard with June Bug in the last two days and she did great. Haven't got a fan on the heater yet but it stays nice and warm in there. The sounds and smells of driving an old car sure brings back a lot of memories. :)
 
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Cvans said:
Doug this ones for you.
Must be a bug going around. The brake line on the 97 f-150 rusted out and it's in the shop. Thursday wife came home and said the car is not shifting right and a warning light is on. Message on the dash said to get it to a service center as soon as possible and read owners manual. Read the book and called the dealer. He said not to drive it and call Lincoln. I did and they say the are sending out a truck at 10 am tomorrow. 2 pm and no truck so I call Lincoln again. Whoops they told the tow company 10 pm. :( I told them to come and get it and instead take it to Watertown as it's closer. That dealer tells me they don't have a loaner because they can't get new cars. SO! We are down to two vehicles. An 05' Escalade on which the Speedometer just quit working and June Bug (1930 Desoto). Never dreamed I'd be driving a 91 year old car as primary transportation. Come on June Bug you can do it.
Click to expand...

Does June Bug have electric start or are you out front of it hand craning the engine over with the starting rod? I do like the movie Chitty-Bang-Bang.

The 2005 Escalade is not a problem, got a Garmin GPS or smarty phone? You can get real time speed on those. I've done that for 3 years.
 
Cvans said:
Doug this ones for you.
Must be a bug going around. The brake line on the 97 f-150 rusted out and it's in the shop.
Click to expand...
I've fixed them for too many others to count, not something I'd send out and pay someone else to do/ unless I lose a couple of limbs....
a <$50 job done myself, becomes a $600+ job being done in a shop..... I flare and bend my own lines.
The guy who owned my 99 Dakota before me, paid more than that to have them done on this one/ I found the reciept in the glovebox after I got it home..... and the douchebags could not have even replaced the rubber flex lines at a total cost of ~$40 for all 3 within that price? No, they left that for me to do. and the job they did bending the lines and tucking them out of the way leaves much to be desired..... Highway robbery for a shoddy half azz job..... I can buy a whole roll (25') of the good ni-copp line for $30-ish.... enough to do that whole truck with some left over....
about 2 years before i got this truck I did that same job for a guy on a 2000 Dakota.... every line, head to tail.... and I felt bad charging $275.....
though the last one I did as a side job for someone else, was a 2000 Chevy 1/2 ton..... and on that one, the guy brought me the truck, and the preformed line kit.... I had to loosen the tank straps and move the gas tank a bit (not enough to unhook any fuel lines) and in trying to loosen those they snapped so I did have to replace them as well.......
 
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