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Please do not reuse you old steel brake tubing. Even though it may look OK on the outside--remember how wheel cylinders pit on the inside?--the tubing can do it on the inside too and it has only a .03 wall. When your grill is planted firmly in the backside of an Escalade owned by a cranky lawyer you will fervently wish you had spent the 4-5 hours necessary to tube the car.

You can buy enough tubing to do the entire car in standard lengths at Napa for about $30 bucks or so and it will be the cheapest and most important part of your restoration.

I like to use the standard lengths as I don't have to do the double flare and with a bit of planning, it will look quite tidy. To make tight bends near the end of a tube, insert a close fitting pin punch a tad deeper than the length of the flare nut, and use it as a handle to make the bend.

Good advice. Thanks!

Media blasted the front backing plate and painted it along with the right front suspension. There was some pitting, but it turned out pretty nice anyway. I'm using PPG black epoxy primer followed by PPG Concept single stage black flattened to a satin finish with 995 flattening agent (1:1 ratio). I don't like to use gloss black- I don't think it has a factory appearance.

I'm just kind of fiddling around with the details while I wait for my master cylinder to arrive. I didn't really plan on cleaning and painting the steering parts, but after reading BigKev's and 51Packard's blogs, I was inspired to go ahead and try to make it look as nice as I could.

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Started the engine for about the sixth time since I've had it. Very quiet, with the only wrong noise coming from the worn out water pump bushing. But even that is getting quieter the more I run it. Keep in mind that this engine has only 33,000 miles on it, but hasn't run in 27 years.

As soon as I get the brakes back together I will take it for a test drive!

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Amazing! Gotta Love it!

Hey joeyearl,

I wanted to find out what the part number was for those fittings you used on your wheel cylinders. I've checked online with little luck. Also, where did you purchase them?

-Garrett

You should not need the adapters on your car as it has 3/16 brake tubing. Brake hoses should just screw in at the front, same with the tubing at the rear.

Hey Ross,
The rear wheel cylinders I got, have a deep well, that looks like it would take a long tube nut with a bubble flare. There is nowhere for a double flare to make a good seal. If I were to run it like it is, it would have a massive leak at the rear. The rear wheel cylinders are larger than the front; Right? The ones I put on the front have the proper mating surface for double flare 3/16" brake line. Yet, what I installed in the rear looks like it would work properly with the fittings on the brake hoses up front. When I compared what was on the car to what I got from Kanter, that is how it appeared to go. Do I need to switch the wheel cylinders around, and put the larger up front, and smaller in back?

The cylinders I purchased from NAPA have smaller inlets than the brake lines on my car. Hence the adapters. I'm not certain what the sizes are, all I know is that the new cylinders I bought had the plastic plugs marked 3/8", which I think are actually 3/16". That would indicate that all the brake lines on my car are 1/4". What I can tell you for certain is that tonight as I was hooking up the right front, I used a 7/16" line wrench on the line nut, and a 5/8" on the hose. See photo.

GearRat52, the adapters are common brass fittings, I got them at NAPA. They were not as inexpensive as I thought they should be at around $6 each. But I still saved $$ over Kanter.

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Right front brakes going back together. I used 1/32" gasket material for the inner grease shield, and 1/64" for the spindle gasket. Cut them by hand with scissors and an X-acto knife.

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