About-brakes.com - welcome on our site. You can find here a lot information about brakes, brake pads and brake linings.
Brake hoses.
Obviously with all the pressure in your brake system, the last thing you need is for the brake lines themselves to deform and flex. If they do, you lose brake pressure, and thus lose braking. Steel brake lines are no problem, but for the flexible areas of the brake lines, you need hoses. Brake hoses come in two basic flavours.
Rubber hoses
Ah the humble rubber hose. Only on your brake lines, not so humble. I don't recommend this but if you were to get under your car and cut one of your hoses in half, you'd notice a couple of things. First, it's amazing how quick all the brake fluid that spills out will stain your clothes and literally eat the paint off your car right in front of you. But second, and more importantly, the hose itself is actually made of three parts. The inner liner is a corrosion and brake-fluid resistant compound designed (normally PTFE / Teflon® based) purely to keep the brake fluid in. Around the outside of that, there's a steel webbed mesh. This is what gives the brake hose its strength and stops it from bulging and deforming. And around the outside of that there's a slightly thicker rubber coating, which is there to weatherproof the steel mesh. The three layers together give strength, flexibility and durability.Steel-braided hoses.
Steel-braided hoses are a slightly different design. They only really have two components - the inner hose which carries the brake fluid and is lined with a PTFE compound, and the outer steel braid which contains and flexing or bulging. Steel-braided lines resist bulging a lot better which is why a lot of aftermarket tuners opt to put them on their vehicles. One downside is that the steel braiding itself is totally merciless and if it finds something to rub against in the vehicle, it will rub right through it, even if it's an alloy. For that reason, a lot of braided brake hose manufacturers put a third layer - a thin transparent rubber sheath around the outside simply to keep everything in check and prevent scuffing and rubbing.I upgraded the lines on my Audi when I still owned it and put Goodridge steel braided hoses on. For a 15 year old car it did make a difference to the feel of the brake pedal. It didn't bring it up to modern standards, but it was better than the flexible, bendy rubber hoses that were on it from the factory.
