I'm not having any fun at all trying to replace the hard line between the SBC pump and the right rear caliper. Back story is the line rusted through on the last bend before the caliper line connection. I bought 25' of 3/16th Nickle-cooper line from Auto zone and a package of Steel nuts M10x1 bubble thread size. I also bought an on amazon which is straight garbage. Every flare I create is distorted. The tool doesn't allow itself to clamp properly and it doesn't looked like it was machined correctly. I feel it should have a proper hole and not the football shaped eyelet. The tubing gets deformed and pinched; leaving pinch marks up and down the clamping zone. And I ruined the line by repeated attempts to re-flare; making the line too short to reach now.

Does anyone have a tool they would recommend that doesn't cost $300? This is a once in lifetime type of DIY repair (IMO) and I really don't want to spend that kind of cash on a tool I'll probably never use again. I did find one that looks promising, but it'll take a month to get to the states and I can't wait that long. https://www.ebay.com/itm/252441537047

Here's a few pictures of the tool, and what my flares looked like.

 

Just get a brake line off a JY car.

 

Unfortunately not anything really helpful from the community. @tjts1 consider this is the North East US where the streets are coated in salt all winter. Most brake lines in the JY are in equally poor condition. NE winters don't play nicely with steel lines. I found someone parting out a car and they broke the brake line while trying to remove it. For those of you who may find yourself in a similar situation, I just found this site and I ordered a new line. Hopefully this will work out well.
https://ezfitlines.com/product/ez-fi...-0-bm10x1-0-b/

 

I am in Massachusetts and just did one brake line last weekend from the distribution box to the rear left caliper (15 feet long) with the same tool you have. It worked great, but it is tricky. Here is some advise from my experience with it.
I have exact same tool as you are from amazon. I also bought the pipe bender . I think, Lowes or Home Depot also sell this bender.
1) Get 3/16 practice line piece from Autozone. You would need maybe 3-4 feet. If they have bubble ISO flares get that so you have a template.
2) Cut the ends of your practice line with a pipe cutter. Don't use anything else (like hacksaw, knifes, scissors, etc.). You want the perfect edge.
3) File the edge a little. Make sure that the edge is flat. Don't file too much. If you have to file a lot it means you made a bad cut. Cut again.
4) The edge must be 90 degrees. Make sure you don't get any leftover material on the edge. Deburr the inside. Pocket knife or sharp scissors work, but make sure you don't cut the pipe on the inside. The inside must be perfect too.
5) Assemble the flaring tool per directions. Put the pipe end into the 4.75 flare opening. Do not tighten anything. Just hold the tool with fingers and lightly push the pipe end with the key to measure the correct length. Rotate the key around and make sure that both ends of the tool are in plane and the key is flush with the tool in any position, while rotating it 360 (or at least 180). This is important, because you want to make sure that the length of the end piece is perfect and it is also properly aligned inside the tool.
6) Hold the tool with your fingers and lightly tighten the closest wingnut by hand. At this point the pipe should not slide. Check your length and plane surface of the tool one more time. There is no going back after this.
7) Tighten the closest wing nut with full force and also some with pliers or pipe wrench. Leave about 0.25-0.5 mm gap between the parts of the tool near the closest nut.
8) Tighten the second wingnut. By hand, if you can, then with pliers or pipe wrench. Also leave about 0.5 mm gap.
9) Tighten the closest wingnut further. I used my full force with a normal size vise grips. Then tighten the outer wingnut, also with full force and with pliers or vise grips.
You are doing this because the gap between the tool pieces will allow some metal to "stay" on the bottom of the bubble and then will not allow the nut to be flush against the bottom of the bubble. If this happens, you still can save the flare with a small file, but it will be tedious.
10) Use a q-tip and put liberal amount of brake fluid on the pipe and on the die of the tool. This will help a lot.
11) You don't need vise. Hold the tool in one hand and start screwing the die in. Do not go back and forth, only in one direction. The instructions say the nut of the die has to touch the tool. Not necessarily so. I got better results stopping earlier. The best flares I got if I stopped when I could not turn it anymore by hands, without any other tools or vise. Maybe 0.5 mm or so before the nut touches the tool. I had leather working gloves on.
12) Unscrew the die.
13) Loosen the outer wingnut with pliers or vise grips. Unscrew the outer nut by hand.
14) You should be able to undo the closest wing nut by hand. Unscrew it and flip it.
15) Carefully pull the tool apart without sliding or bending the line.
16) The flare is ready.

I butchered about 10 flares before I got consistent nice results.

Yes, the tool leaves marks, but they are not a problem. If you are careful, you will not even damage the paint. If you do a little, spray with metal paint then put grease over if you want.
Do not forget to put the nuts on first and the right way before flaring

You also might want to get a 3/16 ID rubber hose from Autozone for new line padding. I could not make all bends exactly as they were, so paddings would need to be replaced. I bought 3 feet. Cardboard knife works great to cut it along.

Hope this helps.

 

@ilya980
Thank you so much for taking time out of your day/evening to put together such an incredible response to my questions and rant. I really appreciate you, as I know it was extremely time consuming to put it all together. I would have responded sooner but such a post requires way more that "thanks". So let me respond to your suggestions; I actually did buy a 25 roll of tubing so I could have lots of room for practice. Before I even touched the car, I sat at my desk and made flare after flare after flare. All in all I used up about 2ft of tubing. My desk look like a Pez dispenser blew up because I had about 25 one-inch pieces of poorly made flares that I kept cutting off. I was very careful to make clean cuts on the tubing, insuring a straight (90) every cut. I also used a drill bit as a deburring tool, and an file made for aluminum to create the required chamfer on the cut. I also tried moving the tubing a mm each way in the crimping tool to see if a longer or shorter tube length would make a difference and it didn't. I also lubricated the tip of the tubing and the flaring insert with a drop of 3-in-1 oil and then for kicks I switched to dot 4 brake fluid; same results. The only thing I didn't try was not fully seating the flaring insert when tightening down the flaring tool, nor using anything more than the bar from the kit as a lever to get a little bit extra on the tube clamps, but it felt like the butterfly nuts were going to break when I really went hard at it on the twist. Per your procedure, it seems that that may be the issue. Maybe I should have made the clamps tighter on the tube.

Honestly, I can't help thinking the clamping part of the tool was just made incorrectly. When it was fully tightened without the tube inserted, the 3/16s (as well as all the others) hole was not round, but oval. And with the tubing in the clamping tool, there was an easy mm of space which seemed to allow the flare to bulge into this circumcised bubble, lol.

I've since returned the tool to Amazon and I gave up for now because I found a web site that makes pre-cut lines with the flare of your choice. SO I ordered this one: https://ezfitlines.com/product/ez-fi...-0-bm10x1-0-b/ and hopefully the flares wont leak when I put the line in. I'll update this post once I'm finished and let you know how it worked out.

Thanks again!

 

I did not use the drill bit to deburr, just small sharp scissors. I used scrap DOT 3 fluid on test tubing, OEM DOT 4 on the actual installed line. I did not go crazy with wing nuts. Just normal size vise grips or normal size pliers, not the large pipe wrench. I certainly did not come close to breaking wing nuts. Said that, I had several tries when the brake line slipped. That would destroy paint, sheer the outer coating and metal layer, and destroy the flare. Even a small slip. I did not even realize at first it was slipping. I saw that making the end tip a little longer than the key would make the flare too wide, sharp on the outside, and with uneven edge. It could be materials too. I used Autozone's pipe for practice, but had OEM line from online MB dealer for replacement. They are "the same", but they are not. Also the end piece nuts are different. Yes, the nuts from Autozone fit, but they are longer and look shiny metallic. The OEM MB nuts are shorter, greyish in color and are made from a different material. I pushed and rotated nuts by hands (wearing gloves) to smooth out the marks from the tool and made sure that nuts are flush against the bottom of the bubble.

Good luck!

 

So 1 thing for me to take note of: you bought the OEM steel line with fittings. I bought a nickel-copper line which is very soft and easily deformed, and also bought Autozone nuts which did seem to have a bit of slop in the way the tube went through them. The dealer wanted $160 for that brake line. I despise my local dealer so much. Thankfully my E55 is 100% so I can let the wagon sit while I figure it out, eventually.

 

@Plutoe Thank you for replying to my thread however, I find that your comments are completely useless; except for adding to your overall post count (13,627)