Chris Albin’s Flying VW Golf: What Really Happened?

What I learned from my Goodridge (not junk I believe) SS brake line failure is that although the length and mounting location of the mid run faster was all dimensionally identical to the OEM part, that was the wrong routing for the different properties of the SS line. The 'problem' was that the SS line has so much more hoop strength than the rubber/fabric hose it replaced that the SS hose resits 'going oval' in order to make the OEM turns. Therefore the SS hose passed along a whole lot of off axis stress into the fitting junctions. Multiply by a zillion cycles shortly accumulated and they failed. I bought another pair and carefully developed my own routing and everything is fine...... I think....., well. Its been fine for 5 years. I'll go have a look.

Had a line fail similarly on our Lemons car after just one race. Luckily it happened at an autocross the weekend after the race, not at 100 mph at the end of the main straight. Only cones were harmed in my case.

Keith Tanner wrote:

David S. Wallens wrote:

Keith Tanner wrote: So, reading between the lines because it's never actually stated - it was a brake line failure?

Yep. There's a photo in the main story.

Ah, found it. Failed at the crimp. So the followup article is to get that brake line to a specialist and figure out why it failed. Obviously it's not a new line. Are they a consumable? Why did he have two failures in short order? What can we collectively learn from this? We sell SS brake lines. which means I get to hear about any problems over a reasonably large install base. The failure rate is extremely low and nonexistent as a catastrophic failure.

THe only SS line failures I've seen have been from people dropping the caliper's weight on the line when working on them. They are not flexible along their axis at all :)

Shaun wrote: What I learned from my Goodridge (not junk I believe) SS brake line failure is that although the length and mounting location of the mid run faster was all dimensionally identical to the OEM part, that was the wrong routing for the different properties of the SS line. The 'problem' was that the SS line has so much more hoop strength than the rubber/fabric hose it replaced that the SS hose resits 'going oval' in order to make the OEM turns. Therefore the SS hose passed along a whole lot of off axis stress into the fitting junctions. Multiply by a zillion cycles shortly accumulated and they failed. I bought another pair and carefully developed my own routing and everything is fine...... I think....., well. Its been fine for 5 years. I'll go have a look.

This might explain why the Goodridge SS lines on my Corolla are so much longer than stock lines. I thought it was an annoying oversight but it could be to reduce strain where the line bends.

That Volkswagen definitely went "Over The Limit".