P38A Brake failure

So I was driving along, thinking. Yup nothing better than cruising along in the old barge! When!! Foot to the floor and dirty pants moment! Lack of retardation. I got her stopped in the nick of time using both feet and limped home cross country.
Anyway the cause of my washing woes is a split btake line evident up under the rear offside wheelarch over the chassis rail. I think it might be the crossover to the nearside. I have dropped out the fuel tank (to sort out another issue with the pump and wheel arch liner, but access looks crap.
Is this repair possible without a lift and dropping the rear suspention or do you guys possess the knoweth?

It should be possible with out a dropping rear suspension, most on here do it ok and make up there own pipes to suit.
its one of the jobs we advise owners to do if the intank fuel pump packs up, they are all getting a bit rusty now with most being about 20 years old now.

So the sight of the pearly gates was avoided, for now....

viking56 said:

driving along......
foot to the floor.......dirty pants moment! ........Lack of retardation.

Click to expand...

Buy a lottery ticket, you now get the chance to change your pipes, along with your pants.

myfirstl322 said:

So the sight of the pearly gates was avoided, for now....


Buy a lottery ticket, you now get the chance to change your pipes, along with your pants.

Click to expand...

Sage advice. Though there remains the option to stay poor and buy undercrackers from army surplus. Thus camoflaging said stains!

Mine was in the same place too, I just cut back to after the clip on the right and and to the left so it was easy to assess and replaced the bad part... changed all the fluid to DOT 5.1 fully synthetic, its a lot better

http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com/resources/faq/difference-between-dot4-and-dot51-brake-fluid/

I bought a coil of brake tube (NiCu) and a set of flange tools. Joined the new and the old tube together with an old coupling and pulled the new tube in by pulling the old. All the way to the engine room. Actually did all my brake tubes in one evening that way. Some mild persuading around some corners and a bit of hassle where the tube was fixed to the frame, but all in all much better to do all at once since you will have to do a proper airing of the system (Rave) afterwards.
Also pulling the tube is way easier than pushing the tube the right way. No need for a lift or dropping the suspention for me at least.

I had this, right under the body across the cross member... I replaced mine right back to the driver's front wheel. There are two manufacturers joins there.
It's a faff to do. I did it with the tank in place.
I fed them in from the driver's wheel arch (plastic removed) .
While your there, I replaced the four rubber hoses. Body to chassis and caliper to chassis. Mine broke the break line fastenings.. had to renew it all. Brilliant for piece of mind! Some plastic clips will break under and around the chassis but I managed to do it. Just don't rush the job. Give yourself plenty of time and no children or partners to hassle you while you do it!!

Thanks for all the tips. I stripped out the brake line back to just before the air resovoir. Visualled the rest of the lines, which are all in good condition. I layed the new pipe next to the old, bent and taped it to the old so all was exactly copied. I added a joint above the diff to make the install easy and clipped all back as per original. All done tank back in bled and tested in 3 hours.
I also made sure to add some heatshrink protection where used on the original pipe. Back in the road white undercrackers in use!

Don't presume the pipes are good where they affix to the clips, that's a classic area for any vehicle to trap moisture whilst the rest of pipe may appear ok.
I've seen quite a few burst at the clips.