ss brake lines

[Terry Rust <trust@domain.elided>]

Jeff thought:
>Also... buy the Extended Stainless Steel Brake Lines... You'll be happy you
>did..

I'ld like to encourage everyone to be careful, one of my son's front ss
lines blew out under hard braking. This was with only a couple thousand
miles on it. Come to find out, a buddy had two or three fail and finally
went back to a longer stock hose. I'm doing that with my sons, already did
it on my CJ and plan to do it to the 800 before it moves to Montana. there
seems to be a couple of inherrant weaknesses in braided ss lines, one is
that they are very fragile at the ends and don't tolerate pulling (like
from branches and rocks) and the other biggy (probably the most insideous)
is that the teflon tubing inside chafes against the braid and it ends up
failing with no way of seeing it coming (My son's), I guess they don't work
well for variable pressure loading either but really prefer a constant
pressure inside. BTW these were NOT a fly-by-night set but are available
from one of the largest mailorder suppliers in the US. Their response;
these are not DOT approved and should not be used on the street (this,
after the failure).

What really upsets me is that these are touted as being the end all brake
line when they really aren't appropriate to this use (according to the
hydraulic outfit that makes my new lines). Some may work better than
others, and all the failures I know of occurred on disc brake applications
so drums might not be as much of an issue. I know several folks who have
used them with success, I'm eating the several hundred $$ worth of lines
and shelling out more $$ to go back to a proven reliable set up on my
childrens 4x4s.

Anybody want a set for an 800, maybe 1000 miles on them tops?