Brake lines rusted out under plastic cover with 148000 miles. All car companies should be required to use nickle lines. Safety issue in my opinion
the car is 12 years old with 148,000 miles…stuff wears out over time. I doubt nickle would be strong enough, they use steel for a reason!!
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The trick with steel lines is to get them coated with rustproofing oil every 3-4 years. They usually spray inside the plastic cover with a special nozzle until the stuff start to drip. NiCop brake lines would be my choice if I had to route a line with a lot of bend in it. They also cost a lot more than steel but they don’t rust.
Ehh, I think that would be a waste of money. I’m a professional mechanic, I have been in this business for 30 years, and I can count on one hand the number of rusted brake lines I have had to replace.
True, brake lines may rust out more in other parts of the country, but so does the rest of the car. I think it’s just part of the cost of living in a rust area.
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Move to the rust belt…you will make a lot of money changing brakes and fuel lines.
I agree, they should be rustproof. This is like mufflers of decades ago, which had to be changed every 20-40k miles due to rust. Now they last well over 100k. The incremental cost to change the brake lines to stainless steel would be minor.
And a rusted out muffler is not catastrophic, whereas a rusted brake line is.
Although I admit I have not had any problem with rusted brake lines and I do live in a rust area.
I can not even total up how many brake and fuel lines I have replaced and I only work on family or occasionally a friends car. Before fuel injection, you could replace shprt rusted out sections of fuel line with neoprene ones and hose clamps.
Copper -nickel alloy lines have been mandatory in Europe for a while now and are gaining acceptance here. N Y state law used to prohibit anything but steel for brake lines and I can’t seem to find out if it has been changed or if the state is simply not interested in enforcing it because the alloy ones are being sold here.
I have replaced the brake lines on my 2004 truck with 130K miles. They were the standard, bare, zinc-plated, wrapped copper, brazed tubing. I blew out the lines in an ABS emergency stop. All of them. Both circuits.
My wife’s 2001 Saab has plastic coated brake lines that are in perfect condition. More expensive to use, but they last longer, for sure.
I live in the rust belt. (Minnesota)
And in the almost fifty years I’ve been repairing vehicles, I can count on one hand how many rusted brake/fuel lines I’ve had to replace.
Tester
Some of our fleet’s vehicles park literally right next to the ocean
That salty breeze sure does a number on fuel lines, brake lines, and the entire vehicle, for that matter 
There are two differences in the rust belt of Minnesota and Western NY. Minnesota has colder weather and less snow. We akso have a bare riads policy near Buffalo and they keep plowing and salting until the roads are bare. The proximity of Lake Erie keeps Buffalo warmer than it otherwise would be and generates a lot of lake effect snow. The corrosive effects of salt are less when it gets colder compared to 30 or 31 degrees and when it gets really cold you are probably using mostly sand because salt doesn’t work well at 25F or colder. Here if you get 50 miles from the lake, the rusting is not nearly as bad because it is colder and less snowy.
Does anyone else that lives here in Minnesota care to enlighten @oldtimer-11 on how much salt/sand is used?
It depends on precipertation, If it freezes or not.
Or if the sun comes out to help the salt/sand melt the ice off the roads.
And then two days later, it starts all over again.
Tester
The Town f Cheektowaga, a first ring suburb of got talked into putting in Solar streetlights to save money. They had to replace them because we had more than a month without seeing the sun and all the lights went dark. We can’t get help from the sun, they just keep salting until the road is bare. Snow every 3rd day seems ok to me. I would love to see a comparison of road salt per lane mile between your area and mine. Are your winters much different than in Green Bay WI where my son lives.
OK, I could not get an exact comparison. For Minnesota I found statewide records of two years 2009-201o with 40 inches of snow and 2010-2011 with 89 inches of snow. in 2010-2011 Minnesota used 8 3/4 ton of snow per lane mile.
The only statewide comparison for NY was the figures for the NY Thruway system give as a 10 year average, It was 20 3/4 tons per lane mile for the whole Thruway but the Buffalo region used almost twice as much salt and the ny City region so a Rough estimate for the Buffalo area would be 30 tons per lane mile.