Trail Fix 101: How to Fix A Break Line and Bleed Your Brakes

Tools/Supplies Needed:

Braided stainless steel brake lines

A few combinations wrenches

Pliers Brake Fluid Procedure:

Step 1: Loosen up the hard line from the soft line

Step 2: Separate the hard line from the soft line

Step 3: Using pliers, slide the clip out. Hold onto the clip because you will reuse it.

Step 4: Loosen the brake line from the Jeep. Take the bolt off of the caliper. Be careful when you’re taking it off, as you may need to reuse the two brass washers in an emergency situation.

Step 5: Pull the line out and slide the bolts and the washers into the new line.

Step 6: Attach the bottom new brake line. Make sure it’s tight enough to not leak but don’t overtighten or else you could risk stripping the bolt.

Step 7: Attach the top of the new brake line. When tightening it down, be sure to follow the brake line’s natural twist and give it ¼ to ½ a twist more to make sure the brake line stays out of the way of the axle.

Step 8: Add brake fluid to the master cylinder

Step 9: Starting from the closest brake to the master cylinder, bleed the front brakes- Pump and hold the brake pedal- let the pedal go to the floor while another person opens the bleeder screw on the caliper, lets the air out then closes the screw.

Step 10: Bleed rear brakes using the same process

Step 11: Check brake fluid and systems

Step 12: HIT THE TRAIL!

Step 13: Take your vehicle to the shop once you’re done riding to make sure the brakes were properly bled.

AK (00:00):

Hey y’all, it’s AK here. We’re out here at Chaos Off Road Park. And we had an issue with a broken brake line. Now, one of the things that happens when you’re out on the trail is you’ve got hydraulic lines that go around your vehicle. One of the best things you can do is invest in braided stainless steel brake lines that have a coating over the outside of them. These are the best things to make sure that you can hopefully not break your brake lines, but if you do, here’s how you replace them.

AK (00:33):

So Scott’s got braided stainless steel brake lines on there. He happened to break one out on the trail. Today, we’re going to show you how to replace this brake line. I recommend you pick up a kit like this. These are spare brake lines. You throw them in your Jeep or your center console, and they’re easy to replace if you know-how. We’ll show you how.

AK (00:54):

All right, Scott. So couple combination wrenches, and go ahead and cut all the zip ties off of there and loosen up the top hard-line right here from the soft line down here. We’re going to loosen up these, separate this line, and then slide this clip out first. Here’s a small set of pliers. And by small, I mean the biggest set of pliers in the box, just because it’s funny.

Speaker 2 (01:21):

I got [inaudible 00:01:22].

AK (01:25):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:25):

There you go.

AK (01:26):

So hold onto this clip. You’re going to need to reuse it.

AK (01:32):

All right. So the next step is to slide that brake line down, and now it’s loose from the Jeep. Next thing we’re going to do is take the bolt off of the caliper itself. So right down here where the other side of this goes should be a 13 millimeter. Now be careful when you’re taking that off of there. There’s going to be two brass washers. One of those washers is going to be on the outside of this. One’s going to be on the inside. We’re going to need to reuse those in an emergency situation.

Speaker 2 (02:05):

Here’s the washer there.

AK (02:17):

Cool. Go ahead and pull this line out. Go ahead and slide the bolts and washer into this new line.

Speaker 3 (02:25):

You.

AK (02:30):

Go ahead and thread that.

Speaker 2 (02:32):

Which way do you want right behind here or in front?

AK (02:36):

Oh, you can get this line. Yeah, that’s fine. Just like that.

AK (02:55):

So snugged up and maybe just a little bit more. Yeah. That’ll work. So we just want this tight enough so that it doesn’t leak. You don’t got to go ham on this bolt. We don’t want to strip it out because then you’re going to have bigger problems, and now you got to go into the caliper. So now we’re going to hook up to top side of this. One of the things that you want to remember before you put that in there is we can put a half a twist or a quarter twist or whatever we need into this brake line to make it lay the way we want. So take a look at this brake line.

AK (03:33):

If I don’t have this twist in there, and let’s say it’s like this, now when that axle moves, it’s going to get caught up in something. If I take how the brake line’s going to naturally lay and then when I tighten it down make sure that I put just a little bit more twist in it like that, it’s going to keep the brake line out of the way, and it’s going to allow this thing to not get caught up in the shock or anything else. So what we’re doing is normally it would be in there, say like this, play with it, put a quarter twist, a half twist, whatever you need so that this brake line kind of acts like a spring, and we’ll keep it out of the way. All right. So now you can slide that in, go ahead and thread that together, and then we’ll do that little twist at the very end.

AK (04:21):

All right. So next up ,it’s time to add fluid to the system, and let’s bleed the brake. We’re going to come over here to the master cylinder. This is going to be on the driver’s side of the vehicle, right up against the firewall here. It’s this yellow cap. Let’s see right here. Pop that cap off of there, and we’re going to put brake fluid right there.

AK (04:49):

So bleeding brakes in the field is a two-person operation. One person needs to pump the brakes and check this master cylinder to make sure that it doesn’t lose fluid or that the fluid level doesn’t go down low enough, and it starts to draw air into these lines again. So right now we’re going to fill the master cylinder up, and we’re going to fill this reservoir up, and then we’re going to use the technique to bleed these brakes down. You want to be very careful when you’re putting this brake fluid in there. So if you do get brake fluids spilled onto anything else, you want to make sure and clean that mess up because the brake fluid will dissolve paint, will mess up finishes, will do damage.

AK (05:33):

All right. Next step. We’re going to bleed these things down, and you’ve got to locate the nipple on the caliper. Come take a look in here. All this is the bleeder screw on the caliper itself. A lot of times it’s going to have this rubber plug over the top of it. Whenever we go to bleed this down, we’re going to pump and hold the brake pedal. We’re going to loosen this up. We’re going to let the brake pedal go to the floor, and then we’re going to immediately tighten it back up. So we don’t draw air back into the system here with my foot on the pedal. I’m going to pump this up, get resistance, pump and hold it open, and then close it. And my foot goes down to the floor. Okay. Typically, two or three times until there’s no more air coming out when you open that up, it’s good enough.

AK (06:20):

So now we’re going to move on to the passenger front. All right. So I’m going to go ahead and pump this up. All right. Open it up and close it. Okay. Open it. Okay. Close it. Did any air come out?

Speaker 2 (06:49):

Yeah, we had air that time.

AK (06:50):

Okay. We’re going to pump it up again. Open it.

Speaker 2 (06:56):

No air.

AK (06:57):

No air?

Speaker 2 (06:58):

Nope.

AK (06:58):

Perfect. You always close it off, and let’s move to the driver rear. All right. So we’ve just bled the front two brakes. Before we move to the rear brakes, we’re going to go ahead and check the master cylinder and make sure that we have enough brake fluid. So, we bled the front. We’re going to go ahead and bleed the rears the exact same way that we bled the front. Remember we’re going to do driver front, passenger front, driver rear, passenger rear. So, we just bled all of the calipers down. There’s no more air coming out of the calipers whenever we bleed them. And you can tell because the brake pedal is just as hard as it was before you broke your brake line. So, we’re going to check the brake fluid one last time. We’re going to check the entire system, make sure that we don’t have any leaks, clean up all the brake fluid, and then we’re going to go back and hit the trail.

AK (07:55):

All right, we got everything bled down. There’s no more air in the system. We’re ready to go hit the trails. However, the way that the ABS modules on these things need to be bled is by plugging in a scan tool to make sure that you get all of the air out of the system. So this will get you home. This will get you

back to the street, and it’ll get you to work on Monday, but take it to the closest shop or take it to your preferred shop so that you can bleed this thing down the right way, just to make sure that you did it all right. Now, make sure that you subscribe and like this video and hit the bell icon, so that as we come up with more tips and tricks, you can be the first to know