Rusted, Busted Brake Line

[AWD Expy]

2 weeks ago, on the highway, in heavy traffic @ 70 mph, a vehicle a few cars up front, lost a wheel. They were able to get over to the shoulder. Everyone saw the wheel cross the median, heading straight for the grill of a semi. Before I could see that impact, I had to hits the brakes like everyone did. After a split second, the pedal went to the floor. I had about another split second to steer away from the minivan in front. It was close, but I made it to the median fine.

I got it home and found the crossover line, in the rear had just rusted out. It turned out to be one of the easier repairs that I've done on brake lines.

 

[crunchie_frog]

Glad to hear you had a lucky day! From what I have read on this forum, you are not that has experience failure of this line due to rust. Probably a good idea for all of us to double check. I lived in Idaho Falls for 9 months for the Navy nuclear prototype school, beautiful country I thought.

 

[974X4BLACKSPORT]

Be sure to check all your other steel brake lines for rust!

Similar thing happened to me braking for a sudden red traffic light while I was driving my 2000 GTP, I am thankful for dual port master cylinders! It was the rear brake line that burst right by the fuel filter located under the rocker panel. I ended up waiting for the light to turn green then turned into the next shopping center paring lot to ***** the pedal problem, I still had front brakes but elected to call AAA come and tow it home. Fortunately non of the other brake lines are rusty.

 

[AWD Expy]

You would think that dual port master cylinders should be a mandatory safety standard. As it is quite unsafe to lose all your brakes at the same instant.

 

[J_C]

I too, lost most of my braking when my rear left-to-right line rusted out. Although I hate to *fix* things before they fail, I would advise anyone with a 2nd gen who lives in an area where vehicles rust a lot, to go ahead and replace their rear line if not done already.

Unfortunately if you do have a lot of rust (or even if you don't), replacing that line may also mean it's time to replace the soft hoses, and the left soft hose is the junction between front to rear and left to right, so getting it off fighting the rust may damage the front to rear hard line too, as the nut for that front to rear line may be seized in place on the line by rust.

You can try to salvage the front to rear line by holding it still with a wrench and rotating the soft line junction connector off of it instead of turning the nut on the line, but any movement of the line once they are rusty enough, may cause a new leak.

 

[sehaare]

About a year ago I got the brake lines on my 98 flushed and the fluid changed (wasn't sure how to do that myself with antilock brakes) and when they flushed it the rear brake line blew on mine too.

 

[J_C]

^ ABS doesn't change the flushing and fluid change as long as you don't let the master cylinder reservoir run dry (empty), always keep it topped off during the process.

As long as air doesn't make it down into the system as far as the ABS module, it will not need any air purged out of it so you can ignore that it's there.

If your master cylinder reservoir does empty, for example from a brake line leak, some say you "need" to take it to a dealer or anyone with a machine that can cycle the ABS solenoids to purge air out, while others say you can just drive it on a slippery surface, get the ABS to kick in on all wheels, then do one more flush on all wheels to purge any air out that might have made its way out of the ABS and downstream towards each wheel.

I did the latter last year when I did mine and so far, the couple times I had ABS activate after that (avoiding hitting deer) the ABS worked fine.

 

[RandomNerd2000]

That line is interesting to say the least, I've got my 2000 that's got a replacement in there, yet the lines look great everywhere else, but my 2000 Mountaineer parts rust bucket has a factory line that's perfect. Makes no sense to me.