SS brake lines, ugly surprise Options

[shane]

Replaced most of the rear brake lines with SS last year. Car spends most of its time in a garage, and never goes to the ocean. Should I have coated the ends, that's a good bit of money to be that rusty.

[UROpartsman]

By "defect rate" I am talking about our warranty rate, which is product coming back for ANY reason. Anyone that has changed these brake master cylinders knows there are some intricacies to the installation.

1. Under each of the 2 rubber sealing plugs (901 355 9329 00) for the reservoir feed lines is a distance washer (901 355 936 00). If these washers are left out during the installation of the new cylinder, or an incorrectly sized washer is substituted, the bottom of the rubber grommet will not be compressed properly, causing leakage or a fluid feed problem to one or both of the master cylinder’s internal circuits. This can hinder or prevent fluid from entering the front or rear circuits, causing either no pressure to develop or hinder proper bleeding of the brakes.

2. In addition, these reservoir feed lines are notoriously difficult to fit into place once the cylinder is installed on the vehicle. An improperly-seated line would result in leakage out of the cylinder, possibly making someone suspect that the cylinder is faulty when in fact the lines are simply not installed correctly.

3. It is also critical that new copper sealing washers (904 355 904 00 or N 013 808 3) of the proper thickness and size are fitted when swapping the front circuit banjo bolt hardware from the old master cylinder to the new one. Failure to do so will result in a leak; again likely creating a warranty return.

These are the types of issues we saw when examining our warranty returns, but as most manufacturers do, we scrap the part, give credit, and count it in our warranty percentage.