US ends brake-line rust probe, urges people to wash vehicles

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By TOM KRISHER

DETROIT (AP) — If you live where salt is used to clear the roads of snow and ice, U.S. safety regulators have a message for you: Wash the underside of your car.

The message came Wednesday from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which closed a five-year investigation into rusting pipes that carry brake fluid in about 5 million older Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC pickups and SUVs, without seeking a recall.

Instead, the agency blamed the problem on rust caused by road salt and a lack of washing. It determined that it was not the result of a manufacturing or design defect.

The agency urged people in 20 cold-weather states and Washington, D.C., to get their car and truck undercarriages washed several times during and after the winter, and to get their brake lines inspected for rust and replace them if necessary. The warning underscores the importance of washing highly corrosive salt from beneath a car because over time, it can cause suspension parts, the frame, or other components to corrode and fail.

FULL story at link.



FILE - As temperatures rise, cars line up for a car wash at the Washery System Touchless Automatic Car Wash on Terry Reiley Way in Pottsville, Pa., in this Jan. 31, 2014 file photo. If you live where salt is used to clear the roads of snow and ice, U.S. safety regulators have a message for you: Wash the underside of your car. The message came Wednesday April 8, 2015 from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the agency blamed the rusting pipes that carry brake fluid in about 5 million older Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC pickups and SUVs on rust caused by road salt and a lack of washing. It determined that it was not the result of a manufacturing or design defect.(AP Photo/Republican-Herald, Jacqueline Dormer, File)

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150409/us-wash-your-car-ed681cd498.html

[Sherman A1]

1. I do every time I take the car to the wash

I always hit the wheel wells and underside as best as possible, to get the gunk off the car.

[bigworld]

2. My dad always told me "A clean car runs better"

And I used to laugh. He was right though!

[MosheFeingold]

11. A clean car

With nice wax job also has less wind resistance.

It's measurable difference in gas mileage.

http://mythbustersresults.com/dirty-vs-clean-car

(Note you can also get extreme the other way and clay dimple your car like a golf ball and get better mileage)

[seveneyes]

3. Mission critical parts should all be stainless steel

Especially thin wall tubes carrying vital fluids that are exposed to corrosive elements. For under a hundred bucks all fluid lines could be made to last beyond the life of the vehicle. Inexcusable.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. I disagree.

In northern Virginia, it is unusual for one to have to replace a brake line on any car that isn't at least fifteen or twenty years old. I had to replace a rear brake line on a 1989 Oldsmobile station wagon three years ago. Since I have to match the new lines to the old lines, the personnel at my nearby car parts store, an Autozone, let me go back into the stock room to select my parts.

This is a job I do not do often, and I was surprised to find that there was a new (to me) option. Not only are the typical steel replacement lines available, but there was a new (to me) option of a nickel-copper alloy line. It is legal in all 50 states, according to the manufacturer. This is the stuff:

NiCopp® nickel-copper alloy brake tubing

DOT APPROVED
FOR BRAKE AND GENERAL
AUTOMOTIVE APPLICATIONS

NiCopp® is a nickel-copper alloy brake tubing that meets SAE Standard J1047 and ISO 4038, meeting all international and U.S. requirements for brake tubing. This alloy is approximately 9.2% nickel, 1.4% iron, 0.8% manganese, and 88.6% copper. Under the UNS system, this alloy is designated as UNS C70600. NiCopp® therefore has the strength and structural integrity of steel lines, but with the added benefit of being much more corrosion resistant. NiCopp® is also easier to bend and form than steel tubing. Nickel-copper, commonly referred to as '90-10 copper', has been used on several European vehicle brake systems since the 1970's, including: Volvo, Audi, Porsche, and Aston Martin.

I am wary of anything new, so before I made the change, I got online and went to some old car forums. One person who had used the new material said that once you had worked with it, you would never go back to steel.

I concur. The nickel-copper line is much easier to bend by hand to the right curvature in the right places, and it will not rust. It costs about 70% more than steel, but that is money well spent. I do not have pipe benders or flaring tools, so I bought pre-cut lengths. I replaced another line back in October, the one that goes from the proportioning valve all the way to the back. The car is of body-on-frame construction, and when the car was made, the brake line was put on the frame before the body was attached. Access was just about impossible. I could never had installed a steel line.

Hit the old car forums. You'll see.

My lines were a lot better looking than the ones shown here:

Silverado Rusted Brake Lines - NHTSA and Consumer Affairs

If you don't have OEM parts available to you for the job, I urge you to look at the new stuff. I do not have any financial stake in the company.

[seveneyes]

6. I agree

That's the same stuff I put on my 2003 Silverado. I guess I just call it stainless steel because of the nickel in it. But yes, it should come standard on any vehicle that is expected to stop when desired.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Maybe....

The nickel-copper lines have a coloration that sets them apart from whatever version of steel is used in the "regular" brake lines. You'll know it when you see it. The cost is somewhat higher too, but the price is worth paying.

Nickel-copper alloy:



The "normal" lines that I used to use (this is said to be "AG coated," but I'd have to look that up to see what that means exactly):



If I had to replace brake lines all the time, I'd buy lines in 25-foot rolls and use a flaring tool. It's an infrequent job for me, so I get the pre-cut lines with the fittings and flares already in place.

Those lines at the Silverado forum looked terrible, especially for being so new.

Some time ago, I was at the Autozone for some other reason, and there was a kid (late teens? Early twenties?) buying brake line. I was taken aback, as I don't expect replacing brake line to be something that, ahem, older people (I'm including myself) to be doing, on older cars. I didn't expect that anyone that young would own a vehicle that needed new brake lines.

So much for stereotyping.

Virginia has an annual safety inspection. It is administered by the Virginia State Police. The first time I took the car in for inspection after using the new material, I let the inspector know that I had run the new line, and that I'd be glad to discuss my repair with the VSP if there were any doubt about the legality of the material I had used. The inspector told me that this material was fine for Virginia inspections.

Now about fuel tanks and ethanol....

Best wishes.

[happyslug]

13. Stainless Steel brake lines look closer to your photo Steel then the Copper Nickel

http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS-Performance-Products/555/635201/10002/-1

The biggest problem I have read about when dealing with Stainless Steel Brake lines is that they are hard to work with. Most replacement brake lines are NOT purchased as parts from dealers, instead mechanics buy brake lines and cut them to fit. This requires a simple power saw to cut the line and a flaring tool to expand the brake lines at each end so they fit the connections. With Copper Nickel and Regular Steel brake lines this method is the cheapest and most effective way to replace brake lines. Both also provides a good bit of flexibility in the line so the line can be moved around other parts of the Vehicle.

Stainless steel is harder to work with and people have had problems doing the flaring needed to fit into the connections. Stainless Steel is also NOT as flexiable
Thus most Stainless steel brake lines tend to be custom made at the factory, shipped to dealers and then sold to people who want to have stainless steel brake lines. These tend to be race car drivers AND older Jeep owners (and owners of CJ-5s, CJ-7s and Wranglers more then other models of Jeeps).

Many cars have changes during the model year that requires different parts, which lead to the use of different replacement parts. I once owned a Chevrolet Suburban and had to find a replacement part for the drive train. After going through several parts that the book said were the right parts, I ended up taking the part to the Auto parts store where it was determined it was a Buick Part not a Chevrolet part. It appears to be the part on hand when the Suburban was assembled and thus used with other parts adjusted to use that part. I bring this up for many auto makers do the same thing and this can lead to different lengths of brake lines even on the same make, model and year of a car. Thus the preference is to custom make brake lines and that is easier to do with standard Steel or Nickel Copper then with Stainless Steel. Stainless steel works best if no cutting and flaring of the line is needed.

[jtuck004]

5. Not a defect - a decision to use parts that would not last, cheaper. You pay for it.

"
...
NHTSA's finding that the GM trucks weren't defective came even though it received 3,645 complaints of brake pipe rust in the General Motors vehicles from the 1999 to 2007 model years, including 107 crash reports and 40 reports of injuries. Seventy-five percent of the complaints came from trucks in the first four model years covered by the investigation, 1999-2003, the agency said.

Investigators checked similar vehicles in Pennsylvania, surveyed owners in Ohio, and did random checks in other salt-belt states to determine that the same problem exists in just about every other vehicle from the same era because brake lines were all made of the same steel materials with aluminum coatings. The industry gradually switched to nylon or plastic-coated steel lines in the mid-2000s, NHTSA said.
..

Mine is older, and of an era with better steel, less affected by the wholesale movement of our steel jobs out of the country.

Lack of government standards encouraged by industry lobbyists might play a role in this too. Doesn't look like the report critiques that end very much. Odd, that...

And now we have mission critical plastic.

[Pakid]

7. The Germans make a very nice brake line

that last quite nicely you can buy the line at least where I live at Carquest. There is no good reason why the OEM are not using this type of line other than trying to cut cost. Sometime one should not cut cost at the expense of safety.

[thesquanderer]

8. Applies mostly to cars from 2007 and older

That's an important point in the article that isn't mentioned in the post here. Newer cars use different materials that mitigate the problem.

Considering that those cars have already been on the road 8+ years, the warning may be coming a little late.

To the extent that it will still help, of course, people with old cars tend to be those who are less well off, and it's hard to wash te undercarriage yourself, so now it's off to the pricey car wash places...

[jwirr]

10. Probably very good advice and not hard to believe. Any of us who live where that is done have seen

for ourselves the rust on the fenders and other parts of the vehicles. We just never thought about rust to pipes. Do car washes do the underside of the car while they are washing the rest of it?

[CTyankee]

12. This is good to know. I have my Altima in the car wash 3-4 times a year or so...

I should do it more often. I'll make sure they do the undercarriage as well (not sure if I have been doing it all along).

[The Jungle 1]

14. Why we hate government.

This engineering flaw has one of two causes. Bad design due to wrong material specification or the manufacturing of the brake lines was defective. There is a definitive start date and end date for the problem. There is no way around it the company was a fault. No one washes the underside of their cars or trucks, that is a stupid answer. This is bull and we have been screwed.

Our government did nothing to make the problem right. GM gets another a pass.

My truck had a break failure but I got lucky and did not have a crash.

There are antique cars all over the place with original brake lines. So I guess those people just wash the brake lines more often? BULL

Why have other cars and trucks not had this problem. The other owners wash their brake lines more? BULL

So when our elected officials ask why do you hate government officials and have so little respect remember this story about break lines and corporate America.

We have lost control of our government, it is an Oligarchy. It is an Oligarchy and will not change until we get money out of elections. Or we boycott chosen corporations.