I have a 95 Honda accord wagon. There’s a clamp that holds up the brake line in the rear /middle of the car. . Its a rusted line. The clamp has rubbed a hole, and when I touched it, it broke. It is a little hard to get to.
How can I splice it, duck tape it, or what ever so I can get to a shop a mile and a half away. There are 4 stop signs in the neighborhood I have to go through. I don’t want to drag a big piece of furniture or some thing behind me to stop it. .
There are no “temporary” fixes for brakes. Either you fix it right or you don’t drive. Getting the car moving is optional, being able to stop it is mandatory !
+1 to PvtPublic’s advice.
If you insist on a temporary fix, when the hydraulic fluid leaks out and you cause an accident, the liability of driving a car in that condition could be enough to have your salary attached for…a very long time.
Or, in other words, you can’t afford to save money in the way that you are contemplating.
Get the car towed.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong , most all modern vehicles have a dual master cylinder so if you lose brakes on one end you still have brakes on the other end . The pedal will go way down but shouldn’t go clear to the floor . You should also have an emergency / parking brake . Does it work ? I’m not recommending you drive it this way but for 1 1/2 miles at a slow speed if I had brakes on one end & a good emergency / parking brake I would .
Let the flaming begin !!!
^
If that one brake line in the rear was so rusted that it broke when he touched it, it is very likely that the other lines are in a similar condition. Ergo–even though in theory he would have brakes on two wheels, it is also possible for another brake line to spring a leak and for the fluid to leak out of both chambers.
@Sloepoke Call this flaming if you like but your post is just plain irresponsible. VDC is correct, the other lines are most likely ready to fail also. Key word-RUST
most all modern vehicles have a dual master cylinder so if you lose brakes on one end you still have brakes on the other end
You’re both wrong and right. The dual master cylinder is great when you unexpectedly blow a brake line, because it means you’ll still have some braking ability to get the car stopped at the side of the road.
But it does not mean that you can drive as much as you want and 50% of the car’s brakes will function indefinitely. That broken line is going to drain the reservoir and once the reservoir is drained, air will get into the master cylinder and the brakes will stop working.
OP: Tow the car to the mechanic. It’s the only safe way to get it there. The fix for a broken brake line is to replace the brake line, and if you can’t do that where you are, the car needs to be transported to a place that can.
If you must ask you are obviously not capable of driving with such a potential failure.
They say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I am worried that the temporary fix to this brake line, would be permanent. You might not have enough life left to fix it for good.
There is no temporary fix. When my daughters car blew out the brake lies (fortunately in our driveway) we had AAA tow it to our shop. The shop is only a few miles away and if we did not have AAA the tow would have been less than $75.00. BTW the tow driver made my wife drive the car onto the flat bed until he could get it lined up and cables on it., he did not want to take responsibility with bad brakes. @cadane33 , call your shop to see what kind of truck they can arrange to get it to the shop.
This is a common problem for this vintage Accord. The dealer will want about $2,000 to fix this. I had my 99 Accord repaired by a race car mechanic with flex line for $900 and the repair lasted five years and was still fine when we sold the car.
I agree that there is no temporary fix. Brake lines have far too much pressure behind them and nothing would hold back that pressure.
I had too move one brake line on my Dakota less than an inch last week, to make room for a wrench. Just getting it that inch fatigued the line enough to crack it where it was badly rusted.
Like my Dakota…your line must be replaced before you attempt to drive the vehicle. Besides, air has been introduced into the system and the brakes will need to be bled.
Yosemite
A couple of years ago, a sometime forum member asked if his 90 year old father’s plan to patch his leaking brake hydraulic lines with duct tape was a sound idea. He was resoundingly advised to prevent his father from taking this approach, but his response was something along the lines of…I can’t stop him from doing what he wants to do, even if it isn’t smart. In this case, we aren’t dealing with an aged (and possibly demented) person, and instead we have a younger person asking essentially the same question.
The bottom line is that somebody who is bound and determined to do something foolish may not be deterred, even by informed advice to the contrary. However, I would hope that the OP has the…smarts…necessary to comprehend that this vehicle needs to be towed to a mechanic’s shop.
I’m going to go against the grain here.
First, I do agree with everyone who says if you need to ask, then you shouldn’t be fixing or driving it.
However, you do have 50% of your braking available as @Sloepoke noted. Pick a time when there’s no traffic (like 11:00 pm or 4:30 am) and drive your 1.5 miles slowly and carefully then. Keep the speed to 10 mph with your blinkers on and use your emergency brake if needed as a supplement.
I’ve driven cars with weak or no brakes several times. I felt it was done in a “safe enough” way. I understand others will disagree, and I can’t argue with them.
Obviously the safest way to get the car to a shop is to have it towed there. If the costs is simply too high then you go for the next least risky option. Does the parking brake work, and how well does it work? Are there any hills on route to the shop?
If you decide to drive this car in this condition to a shop - and you have any kind of an accident or incident along the way. You will get a citation for driving an unsafe vehicle, with a several hundred dollar fine. Your insurance will deny your claim and the claim of anyone whose property you damaged. You chose to drive an unsafe car and therefore your insurance is invalid, it is in the fine print. That means you are liable for a lot of money.
I think the cost of a tow is looking pretty good right now.
Have you ever tried to get your garden hose to stop leaking using electrical tape? Doesn’t work so good, right? And the fluid pressures involved with brakes are much, much higher. No way to expect success with a temporary repair like that. Too risky. I think you need some version of a tow-solution. Ask the folks at the shop you intend to take it if they have a method to tow it from your place to theirs, they might do it for free since it is only 1.5 miles and they are getting some business from you in return, so it is a win-win. Or they might be able to come up with some other sol’n.
If you’re certain you’re going to repair it properly and at a shop that is close by and seeing as how the line is junk you can take a pair of Vise Grips, side cutters, etc. and crimp the line flat where fluid will not pass.
That will disable the brakes that the line goes to but can provide a little leak-free braking.
This means drive slowly and carefully and it also does not mean crimp it and forget about it.
Anybody here know, just curious, can this tool below be used to create double-flared brake lines compatible for auto use?
http://www.harborfreight.com/double-tube-flaring-tool-kit-66534.html
I think it can but not very well. I have the Snap-On equivalent of that tools and while I avoid making brake lines I seem to remember the Snap-On version did not work too well with smaller sizes of hard tubing.
For larger sized tubing it works great.
One of the independent parts stores here closed down some years ago (dammit) and they carried a wide assortment of pre-made brake lines. Just pick a length, bend to fit, and voila.
They were also cheap with lines running from 5 to 10 bucks at most. For that price it wasn’t worth attempting to make one.
I noticed while working on the master cylinder that I need to replace the brake line ass’y on my truck that runs from the master cylinder to the front/rear brake light warning switch block. It’s original to the truck, maybe 3 feet in length, part flexible rubber hose, part steel tubing, and the connection steel/rubber isn’t done with a flare fitting you can undo with a wench. That junction is not removable, done w/ some kind of special rubber/steel joining-tool. Rock Auto doesn’t seem to stock that ass’y, but good idea to just purchase some pre-flared brake line and flexible brake line of the right length, some adapters and make it up bespoke.