Rusted brake lines.
 

What would be better? Replacing the lines using coiled brake tubing,copper-nickel,or pre-formed stainless steel brake lines ?

Do both require a flaring tool and new fittings?

I'm a little confused.

Thank you.

Steel is strong but will rust- all preventative coatings/treatments will fail eventually in hostile enivonments.This will decrease the integrity of your lines.
Copper resists corrosion extremely well but just doesn't have the strength of steel.
The 90/10 NICOPP lines they're making these days are sort of a best of both worlds. Almost as strong as steel while just as corrosion resistant as copper.

I haven't been able to find any vehicle-specific NiCu lines.. Flaring and fitting would be essential. Various flare tools are available. Tubing bending and forming pliers would be another must-have. Could be quite the job.
Any reason to steer away from OEM replacement? That'd buy you another maybe ~10 years.

Thanks for your reply.

I just received an email from a friend that explained that Dorman offers stainless steel replacement lines with all of the fittings necessary to complete the job.

My concern is how difficult is it to pull these lines into place when they are preformed?

Would it be easier to pull a piece of brake line from a coil and then flare the ends at their location of placement?

I recently replaced some nasty pitted out aluminum transmission inter-cooler lines that required extensive careful manipulation... gain 6 inches, one turn left, gain a foot, two turns right, kick out to the right, slide over that, under this, turn again... just pay close attention to how you got the old one out and reverse that procedure. It's almost therapeutic.
Aftermarket lines begins to look like re-engineering GM's design- planning your bends / figuring out where to route / learning the art of double flaring. In my amateur opinion, I think it would be indisputably easier to carefully twist/turn/fidget/slide OEM lines into place.

How bad are the lines? A viable option might be to leave the lines and only change the hoses that connect lines to calipers.

It's a 2002 Chevy 2500 Suburban with only 55K miles.A brake line burst while attempting to stop for a yellow light.After inspecting all of the lines,it was easy to determine that they are all rusted and present a potential hazard.They need to be replaced.

I also have a 2002 Suburban 2500 (with 4wd).

Last Year I had a brake line burst and when I looked at all the lines, they were badly rusted.

I bought the stainless steel prebent kit from classictube.com. If I remember correctly it was about $375.

I would have usually installed it myself, but it was in the middle of winter and too cold to work on it. My local garage did the install and they said it wasn't too bad, but there were a few tricky parts.

Steve

Thanks for your reply.My Suburban is also 4WD.

The Dorman stainless steel preformed kit is only $100.00

Now I just need to decide if I want the preformed kit or the coil kit.The advantage to the coil kit is that it allows you to reroute the lines so you don't have do any major part removal,such as the gas tank.

making your own lines will cost approx $30 for 25 feet of cupric/nickel line. This is the best choice of line as it easy to bend and flare. You will have to factor in the cost of a flaring tool and on car bender. You may also need a proportioning tool to bleed the rear brakes.

you can slide the line in between the tank and frame rail if you start from behind the rear axle and push it forward. cover the open end first to keep dirt out of it.

I think I'll wind up doing a doorman kit myself. About 3 coats of some high-performance enamel- probably buy me 10 years of braking.

I'm leaning in that direction.Meanwhile I have to ride my Harley.Oh the inhumanity,LOL.

The Dorman kit is stainless steel and should not rust ,therefore it shouldn't require any coating.

rubberized rocker guard is the best thing to coat the brake lines with....it resists stone chilps

I felt obligated to report about my experience since I received so much help here.I chose to install the Dorman preformed kit.I found it on Amazon for about $85.00.With the help of my good neighbor it took us about 8 hours and didn't present any major obstacles.Since we couldn't view some of the lines,riding on top of the frame rails, we had to do it by feel in order to release the lines from the clips.It was a little slow going but we finished it and they're working perfectly.

Thank you forum members.

you saved some money then. a shop would charge approx 7.5 hours labour to replace all 7 lines.

Thats about $700 dollars worth of labor, according to my math, around here anyhow.

Hey Raymond 1960, glad to hear you didn't run into any major obstacles as I'm about to do this job myself. I had a line burst on my '03 Yukon Denali and when I put it up on the lift it was obvious that all the brake lines should be replaced. I went with the NiCopp kit from Rock Auto after looking at all the options. Hopefully I made the right choice.

My timing must have been good as I paid $104.79 when I ordered a couple days ago but I see the same kit at RA is now listed for $140.79.

The scary thing is my fuel lines don't look much better than the brake lines so they will probably get done next.

I'll let you know how it went in a week or two. I'm sure it will help a lot that I have a lift in my garage.

a bender like this is great for on car bending.
https://www.eastwood.com/ew-brake-forming-tool.html

Having a lift will be a great help in replacing the brake lines.

Good luck.

I got the job done and the NiCopp lines were nice to work with. Easy to bend by hand without kinking even when the bends were pretty tight.

I'm glad I didn't go with the prebent lines as I can't imagine how you could snake them into place without raising the body off the frame a couple inches.