Abysmal failures

Looking at the brake lines remaining to be connected under the hood, one is short enough to be slightly too tight. Rather than remaking it, I'll cut it shorter and add an extension. The other is a very difficult shape to achieve. I tried a couple of times and didn't get anywhere near what I wanted. Thus I bought a pair of 90 degree bends from O'Reilleys.

So, today I had a go at flaring a new end on a piece of discarded line that would work well for a two-piece line. The flare didn't go quite as planned and the whole thing looked off as I was doing it. Well, looking at the tool it seems the tool has committed suicide! The center pin has bent itself. That will never produce a good bubble flare.

Not too discouraged I pulled out another flaring tool that I'd bought from eBay some while back that was supposed to do metric flares, back when I thought the line was 6mm not 1/4 inch.  I tightened the flaring clamp down as tightly as it would go that seemed to go well so I began to make the bubble. That seemed as if it went pretty well so I flared it and that was a curiously short process.

Looking at the line after releasing it from the clamp, it seems the clamp from the eBay kit is no good whatsoever. Fully clamped down the line just slides. In the end I took the good parts from both kits and made a working good flare set.

Having made one line that would work I looked at the 90 degree bends with the thought of seeing how much line I need to cut off in order to use one. That's when I found that the 1/4 inch bends which I had thought looked a little large were in fact mislabeled. They are more like 5/16 or even 1/2 inch. There is no way on earth I can use those.

In the end after all those failures I gave up for the day. it was just too cold to be bothered messing about outside much more. I had hoped to have working brakes by the time I went back to work but it looks like I'll have to look for a decent day at the weekend. It's quite stressful to have been trying to get this done for over 4 months and not finding time or weather.