Realize I've said nothing about bending these pipes, have I? So here I go again!
You might think that in college we were taught to use pipe bending tools, and indeed we were, but our instructor was very keen that you learn how to bend pipes just with your bare hands with, perhaps, the assistance of a screwdriver handle. His argument was that once out in the workshop you will make money by undercutting your bonus times. I'm not sure how it works now but back in those days pretty much all jobs would have a "book time". If you did the job in less than the book time and went straight on to another job you could "bank" the "book time" you didn't use. All jobs were "clocked" on the job card so at the end of the day when your cards were added up you might have done 10 hours of "book" time in 8 hours of actual working. Lots of lovely bonus to be had! So we were all keen to learn the quickest way to do it and with brake pipes I found bending round your thumb:
shown here with a bit of flex representing the pipe, worked well, probably better than a screwdriver handle, I think because your flesh is compressible so tends not to flatten the inside of the bend like a screwdriver handle does. Oh, and you're not going to get far with steel pipes like this! you need a bending tool. But copper works absolutely fine. If the tube kinks you must scrap it.
Probably like most of you guys I've always collected old washers, nuts, bolts, and miscellaneous "useful stuff". I have tins and tins full of them! So later I built dedicated bending tools, here are a couple together with my two favourite pipe bending screwdriver handles:
Of course when you start doing brake hydraulics seriously you'll all know it's a bit like opening Pandora's box don't you think? In that a whole load of corrosion related problems you've never previously encountered enters your life! Naively you might look at a leaking wheel cylinder when servicing the brakes and think "Ok, there's just a pipe nut and a couple of retaining bolts holding that on, I'll have that changed in a few minutes" Oh foolish one!!! The damned bolts, or one at least, will snap or round off if it's more than about 6 years old (and you can bet it'll be that awkward rearmost one on our Pandas!) and you watch, with horror, as the corroded pipe merrily rotates with the tube nut. So you think "Yikes! better stop and retighten it" only to find the pipe then snaps as you reverse the direction of rotation of the tube nut! Tube nuts corroded into flex hose unions are a pet hate of mine as I'm often hoping to save the flex hose.
So here's a few of my "solutions":
First stop is a good soaking with Plus Gas (my favourite) although my American friend swears by PB Blaster and a light tapping with a small (toffee type) hammer to help it penetrate. It's amazing what 5 minutes of light tapping can achieve, don't dismiss it's efficacy. Then you need to "attack" with a spanner which will properly grip as much of the nut as possible. An open ended spanner is definitely to be avoided on tight nuts/bolts as they just don't get a good enough grip. A 12 point (Bi hex some call it) spanner or socket is only slightly better. You need a 6 point hexagonal spanner or socket. If it doesn't move with this it's not going to. On tube nuts a dedicated spanner designed for the job - a split ring - is the way to go:
if you are trying to save the pipe but if you are replacing the pipe just cut the pipe off flush with the tube nut and get a hex socket over it. You'll just waste time any other way. If all your efforts go hopelessly pear shaped your last resort is likely to be some sort of wrench. I would strongly advise against the ubiquitous locking wrench (often called a "Mole" - that was the most famous brand) These type of grip definitely have their uses and I must have about 8 or 10 in my tool box of all different jaw shapes, but not here. You need a wrench which will tighten as you apply pressure to it so a Stilson or Footprint type jobbie is what you need. Here's a pic of a mole, in the middle, with the others on either side of it.
A number of years ago I found one of these:
in a market in Salisbury town square whilst visiting my daughter. It's a Stanley brand which is not a brand I particularly think of in relation to automotive tools but they make good enough screwdrivers etc. I liked the look of it because it has 3 gripping sides but more importantly, it grips the hex it's on tighter the more pressure you apply to it's handle (on the return stroke it also "jumps" round to the next set of hex flats so, on something like a tube nut it grips extremely well with none of the tendency of a split ring or open ender to splay the jaw flats and you can "ratchet" round a set of flats at a time as you slacken the nut. Each wrench handles a range of sizes too.
It was actually the biggest one I bought in that market because I wanted to use it on the locking nuts on steering rack track rods - which can be "stupidly" tight and cause open enders no end of problems. Unlike a Stilson, which is what I would often use on tight ones, it doesn't mark the nut faces. It works so well I then bought the other two off a site on ebay, (there are only 3 in the set, each wrench, as I said above, doing a range of sizes. The smallest one is my automatic "go to" now for tube nuts.
Lastly here's a tool I've shown you all before but at that time I hadn't had it or used it much so, apart from having wanted one for some time and being very pleased now I had it, I couldn't really comment on its usefulness. I was a little worried it had been an expensive indulgent purchase which I might not use that often!
It works in conjunction with an air hammer - just an ordinary one will do
but the clever bit is that the hex depth inside the socket is quite shallow so when you put a hex into it it stops before the whole hex is inside
This is critically important because it works by shocking the screwthread of the fixing thus loosening corrosion. You have to bear this in mind when deciding where to use it. Ideally it works very well indeed on brake bleed nipples which is primarily what I bought it for. Look at these pics to see how the nipple sits in the socket:
and here it is on the nipple of the new cylinder waiting for me to find the will to install it into Becky. Notice the socket doesn't "snug" down completely over the hex head? this is critically important to ensure the hammer vibrations are transferred into the nipple not the casting
In use you would spray some Plus Gas on the nipple and then assemble the air hammer, driver punch complete with it's handle and suitable sized socket:
Then put the socket over the nipple and trigger the air hammer. Let it hammer away for a while, I usually give it about 20 secs to start with. Then, quite gently, try applying a turning force with the wrench handle. Stop well short of what you would judge a shearing force to be if the nipple doesn't move and carry on with a bit more hammering. The most I've had to hammer for so far is about a couple of minutes (that seems like forever when you're actually doing it) but you must resist applying too much turning force and snapping the fixing due to impatience. Keep hammering and it will slacken in the end - at least every one I've used it on so far has! Its absolutely "magic" on bleed nipples (for which it's specifically intended) but I've also removed a tube nut after I'd sawn off the pipe which i didn't think had the slightest chance of coming out and so saving an otherwise good cylinder. Normally in a situation like that, where I wanted to save the cylinder but couldn't move the tube nut I would take the cylinder off the backplate and clamp the stub of the tube nut in my vice then rotate the cylinder to get the remains of the tube nut out but if the tube nut is that corroded there's a good chance the cylinder retaining bolts will be too so you're making problems by trying to undo them. Just cutting the tube off and "attacking" the otherwise undamaged hex on the tube nut with this tool almost guarantees it'll undo - and the cylinder stays where it is! In fact It works on anything where the vibratory force is being applied directly through the fixing to the screwthread. So brake parts as mentioned above but also a nut on an exhaust manifold or a bolt screwed into a casting - I'm thinking up new situations for it all the time. The socket range that comes with it is quite limited but, as long as you are working with a flat headed fixing (like a hex headed bolt for instance) you can just pop a nut or two inside a standard socket so the force is applied to the fixing through the nuts not through the outside of the socket to the casting as would happen if you didn't put the nut spacers inside the socket. What it's not going to work on would be the sort of situation where a nut is on the other side of a chassis member and you can only shock the bolt head. Or perhaps a bolt screwed through a suspension mount through the chassis into a captive nut - I think all you'd achieve would be to break the captive nut free! So you definitley have to apply the "little grey cells" but, used intelligently it's a wonderful tool.
Here's a video of this remarkable tool in operation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf_mUSgkZbw
Thanks! Jo
