Snafu-Si

I was at a stop light yesterday and when applied slightly more pressure, the brake pedal got real soft suddenly. I was like uh oh. The brake light came on. I was near an autozone and pulled in, I looked under the hood and the Reservoir looked low, I bought some fluid and filled it up and drove home which was a short drive.

The Pedal remained soft, I looked under the hood again, the brake master cyl looks dry, no leaking around that unit, nor did I see any leaking around the abs unit.

I peaked under the car and about 3/4's back the brake line say about under where the rear seats would be were pretty moist of the fluid I had just added.

I'll take another look at it later and take some pics but it looked like only this section was leaking. Am I to assume that hopefully just this section has some worn out lines or is it possible there could be more to this problem?

I've been unemployed for a while now, and I only JUST got a new job that doesn't start till monday, I'm broke as hell and I'm hoping this won't be too bad of a fix.

Snafu-Si

There's a place called "just Brakes" locally around here and I was thinking of maybe seeing what they can do but.

I just saw some horror story by Dateline NBC about "Just Brakes"
and this came up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k_Ha...2BA01501B031B8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eij0Qxc-ALs part 2


I'm not going to even bother with it anymore, gonna look somewhere else.

ihaterust

go back to auto zone and pick up a 12" brake line. bend it in a u shape. disconnect the two brake lines on the proportioning valve on your firewall. install new u shaped brake line.
this bypasses the rear brakes. you might have to bleed the fronts depending if any air got in there. but if you keep driving with leaking lines they will eventually blow.

i had to do this while driving 3500km across the country a few months ago. i had hawk hp+ pads on the front and it still stopped better than the stock brakes ever did.

1991civiclx13

do you know anybody with a flaring tool? If you can locate the leak its not that hard of a fix...

Snafu-Si

my Master Cyl "Looks" okay.



abs Looks okay



The lines running the length of the car seem okay



This however does not look okay at all, this is the source of the where its leaking from.
The metal brake lines look to be in bad shape, rusting badly from all those years of living in michigan winters I suppose.







The line on the upper end of the picture looks to be in the worst shape, i don't know how far the rest of the lines look to be going.

I'm not mechanically inclined well enough to do something like this myself. How much is something like this going to run me?

Snafu-Si

seems like an interesting idea, I have Hawk LTS pads on my CR-V.

wes wagon

Dude... you really need to replace all of those lines. Take the bus until you get a paycheck and order some good lines, even if they're used ones. I say that because you're going to spring a leak in another line soon - if there's not more than one leak already.

You know, it will be a challenging job but not really "hard", you just need flare nut wrenches and a brake bleeding kit (and a friend to help.)

Snafu-Si

I found a diagram of the 99 CRV brake lines. I marked the part where its is leaking



I've visited 2 shops so far, i don't really feel like shopping shop after shop after shop, so I'll probably just either do it at the local city auto shop, or at the dealer.

The local shop Clear Lake Auto, all I could do was describe the problem, and I showed them pictures I took the same I posted here, they said on a rough estimate, if its just one section of the line that's bad they could just replace that part of the line. But I've pretty felt and been told, if one part of the line is going bad, the rest is probably going to follow.

They quoted me roughly at $300-$500 based on what they saw on my pictures.

The dealership Clear Lake Honda, told me they would have to replace the entire line, and recommended that I did both lines going to the rear. Both lines need to be ordered from Chino California, and would arrive next week or so. Both lines were about $68 ish, so with parts, labor, flush, bleed, etc, he said about $600... ish.

wes wagon

Yep, definitely get them bot replaced. That is a TON of $$$ though, but since both quotes are similar you can be reasonably assured that's what it will cost. I still think that, if I were you, I would try to find someone to help you do it. You should be able to get the parts for closer to $40 each (before shipping):
http://www.hondapartsnow.com/Page_Pr...es%20%28ABS%29

Snafu-Si

Yeah I know its a ton, I don't even actually have the money, going to take a loan from a buddy probably, they said they would help me out and all, feel awful doing it.

I would love to try to do it, or find a buddy to help assist me to do it, but I'm not even from this town let alone know anybody here. I've always had a buddy to help back in Michigan who worked at the dealership, but I'm across the country now, and I don't know a soul here.

I'm not too mechanically experienced either. I've only done basic maintenance like changing oil, differential fluid, header, exhaust, intakes, and the only thing I've ever done with brakes are the brake pads.

I only have basic tools too, though from the looks of it, I only need basic tools. What can I say, this jsut happened at the wrong time. I'm new here, don't know anybody, between jobs, broke, yadda. Unless there's a perfect walkthrough somewhere to do exactly this job, I'm eager to know how.

el crapitan

there's brake line flaring tutorials all over the net. buy a halfway decent kit. it's gonna be like 50$. find one with a tubing cutter included. you can then either buy a section of already flared line with fittings and cut out the bad section, and flare in new ends and install the ready section, or buy a section of line and unions and flare it yourself. i believe it's 3/8". buy a fair sized length and use some for practice. follow the instructional video and after a few tries, you'll have it hammered down. it's super easy. this way you'll know how to do it. and you'll have the tools to do it again if need be

Snafu-Si

Id just like to say thanks for everyone with the good advice, its very appreciated. Honda-tech never lets me down. :D

ihaterust

brake lines are 3/16"
flaring kit from auto zone is 30 bux
25 ft of brake line is 25 bux
reuse the old fittings
do not buy the oem lines because they are put on before everything else in the underbody and are a **** to replace.

just use new line flare it and connect to the prop valve on the firewall. then run all the way back to the wheel cylinders on each side. try and run them nice as you can and ziptie them up. this should take about 2 hours in a driveway with hand tools and common sense. im sure any regular mechanic would do it for 200-300 bux.

2000crv sport

well not too disrupt your post or anything but i bought my crv a couple of months back. then i seen it had some replacement brake lines but they were ran over top of the plastic guard and where ziptied under the plastic quard of the vehicle and old lines where still in place and just bent over at the ends and new ones ran around and connected is this a bad thing ? i might get some pictures latter

Snafu-Si

update, the dealership i dropped it off at said its just those lines that are leaking however.

And this is a big however.

They said that (and I'm sure I'm missing some info here) that to remove the lines they need to drop the subframe or something like that, and that the suspension components that they need to remove on the front end, are so rusted up, that attempting to remove them, they would not come off, they would simply break. There is too much rust and corrision from my years of living in Michigan and the salt and just deteriorated it so much that they recommended to


Buy a different car.

The repairs to drop the subframe, and replace all the suspension components that would end up breaking upon removing is more costly to fix and replace with new suspension components than what the car is worth.

FOr me, the car had run fine, the engine runs smooth, everything else works like clockwork, but the brakes have gone bad and now this.

What do I do?

Snafu-Si

Going to go this route.

CRX Si69

Thats a good idea. You can just rent the flaring tool, and you get most if not all of your deposit on the tool back.

Snafu-Si

don't feel that you're disrupting anything, actually your info helps out greatly that it has been done before. It actually broadens the idea of running some bypass lines even more.

I needs be, I'll end up doing something like that, or have a local garage do something like that. Doing it by the book is ridiculously ineffcient.

2000crv sport

yeah the problem i have with it is my crv has 80,000 kms on it and has new brake lines...maybe they rusted away by just sitting around in the driveway of they previous owners ?

but if the repair was done by a shop they did quite the hackjob, and once i get my crv on my friends hoist i will try run them in a bit better spot because if i ever bottem out my car on a rock my brakes will be gone....

Snafu-Si

take some pics if you can, I'd like to see how they did it.

2000crv sport

i will try get some tomorrow

Snafu-Si

Your conditions sound a lot like mine were for my CR-V, but you had way less mileage, or KMS, I'm at 118,000 miles, and you're only at about 50k miles or so.

You're from Ontario right? I was from Ann Arbor Michigan, I used to commute to Windsor Ontario once a week for nearly five years. Southeast Mich is roughly 0-20 degrees Fahrenheit during the winter months, maybe a few -10's.

The car was my winter beater/summer rain beater as I never drove my civic in rain or snow. It saw all the slush and salt you could throw at it, but I loved it, had some great snow tires on it for the winter months. The car could sit for weeks if not months during good weather seasons though.

Not sure why your lines were replaced so much sooner, but since you're not the original owner, I guess many variables could have happened like they could have ran over a moose and its antlers tore out the lines. That is most likely what happened......... O_O

2000crv sport

haha i dono if you know how big a mouse is but i think i could drive underneath a mouse with the crv ive been north and they are not something you wana run into :p but yeah i still didnt take any pictures ....

Snafu-Si

Local guy says he can't seem to find a way to get to the rear lines without dropping the fuel tank, also says my lines on the bleeder screws are also corroded badly and feels they might also break if attempted to be removed.

Also said he noticed one of the fuel lines running the length is also corroded very badly. Is that what one of the other two lines next to the brake lines running to the rear are?

It always comes crashing down.

Does anybody know of accessing the rear lines issues where the fuel tanks becomes an obstruction?

2000crv sport

better late then never ?



hope this helps and sorry for the horrible pictures as u might notice its dark and cant tell what im taking a pictue of till it flashes :p