Over the last few years I have had the occasion to make my own hard
lines.
I started out with a cheap kit that I bought; which wasn't all that
great but got me through my first project. When I went to use the kit
again most recently I had a completely different result. For the life
of me I couldn't get a double-flare that was even straight across the
face. I tried and tried, but I noticed that the way the blocks had been
milled the two surfaces weren't perfectly flush. This did explain the
minor leaking issue I had with an earlier set that a lot of tightening
took care of.
This was a large project and the cheap kit wasn't making flares that I
was comfortable with anymore. So I ran to Autozone to see what their
loaner kit created, but it wasn't any better maybe made them a touch
worse.
Then I thought I would try a new cheap kit as this was the last time in
the foreseeable future that I would need the flaring kit. So I bought a
cheap Snap-On kit (around $45), which the Snap-On guy warned me against
and it wasn't any better. In fact the holes in the two halves were
off-center which made a new and completely worthless flare. So I
swapped kits with the guy and dropped some larger dollars for the full
price kit (around $110).
This kit made perfect flares every time (period). I killed 1.5 days and
a lot of gray hairs trying to not spend money. After I got the right
tool the whole project was done in a few hours. And there weren't any
nagging leaks to deal with.
Consider the tool below to be strongly recommended.
http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/item.asp?P65=&tool=all&item_ID=16276&grou
p_ID=1338&store=snapon-store&dir=catalog
-Marc-
Villa Park, IL
2000 Dak 4x4
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net
[mailto:owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net] On Behalf Of Pindell,
Timothy
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 9:53 AM
To: dml@dakota-truck.net
Subject: RE: DML: Compression Fittings On Brake Lines
Is there a good kit/tool for making nice double flares on steel tubing?
I'll pay good money for one that produces repeatable, quality flares. I
have a cheesy little parts-store kit that has a tendency to amplify user
error and produce very inconsistent results.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 01 2005 - 05:44:45 EDT