[Andygoodbloke]

Hi All.
On my Suzuki Samurai 1989 - leaf sprung
After running all the lines for the rear brakes and replacing some lines etc, my friend and I went onto bleeding the brakes.
We did , brake pedal pressure felt great and thought it was a happy ending in time for a pint, but on the back brakes there is one bleeder for both rears brakes on the left rear slave cylinder as there is a cross pipe across the top of the diff/axel housing to feed from the right to the left slave cylinder. - there was 2 leaking joints with a slow drips. Talk of women's body parts followed

This is an old line but the issue I am having is I cannot fit the brake spanner in the gap between the hose and the bleeder valve, and on the other side the feed in pipe and the cross pipe to the left side slave cylinder they are simply really close together. I have tried and made the issue worse by not getting onto the nut properly and rounding it off more. The brake spanner is a thick single hex and now they are even more rounded off I don't want to make it worse, so any ideas on how to tighten these up? When you have 2 pipes so close together, what have others done to tighten these up to pressure

I did consider removing the bleed nipple altogether for more room, but the leak on the other side will not be able to do this. I have hit the brake spanner with a hammer to tighten it so is a tighter fit but that is not solving the issue of the spanner being too big. Is it worth trying an open ender spanner or a crows foot spanner? If I replace the complete line I am going to have the same issue doing these up as well so would rather experiment on the old line first until I find a technique which works, will heat help to expand the metal?

It is a 10mm spanner the other end of the 11 pictured

What do others use, have others found the same issue, how was it over come?

Thanks Andy

[Gwagensteve]

On the side with the bleeder remove the bleeder with a socket and use a flare nut wrench on the brake line.

Fort the side the two flare nuts are side by side you will need to grind down the fire nut wrench, I have one I ground down so it fit between the other nut.

You MUST use a flare nut wrench. An open end or crow's foot wrench will round the nut off.

[Andygoodbloke]

OK will get the grinder out
Thanks Andy

[Andygoodbloke]

GwagenSteve
Can you take a pic of your ground down Flare nut wrench (brake pipe spanner so I have an idea of how much to grind off - please

Thanks Andy

[Gwagensteve]

Hard to make that relevant Andy, the thickness of the spanner will be different across all manufacturer's. The repco ones are really thick

I can't find my custom one right now.

You can also start with a cheap 10mm ring spanner and cut the slot for the brake line, ring spanners are thinner wall than flare nut wrenches so will need less grinding.

Just grind until it clears.

[Andygoodbloke]

I tried grinding down my oldest looking 10mm ring spanner and the sides were too think to get it to tighten, so ground more down from the sides until it did.

When I put the spanner on the brake line nut, it was too thin to hold the pressure and spread. - I was glad I didn't use a brand new expensive Snap on spanner. At this point I was discussing women's body parts and excrement

I ended up removing the whole line and run the cut off flare nut in and old of the slave cylinder to hopefully make it sit well in the brand new slave cylinder. I used a tube socket and old nut to clean/clear the thread and have an idea how far it should go. That came out, added a small touch of grease to the threads on the new line incase it has to come off again and started at one end and bent and installed the new pipe across then did it up with a new open ended spanner ensuring it was not going to strip the nut and round off - thank however, but it went in and tightened to pressure

Then a re bleed, leaks checked and fixed and I now have a working brake system and brakes. The pedal felt fine to my mate who was bleeding the system with me, but to me it felt spongy so will wait until next weekend and re bleed hopefully the air in the lines will all meet in some of the high points on the lines. The lines may have been empty with no fluid and unused for some time - like years. The bleed produced a milky looking brake fluid indicating a leak and water, but hope that may have been in the lines or master cylinder so not panicking yet. I won't be driving high speed at fixed objects to test - yet