Urgent, Brake line help to pass safety inspection

you can snake the new lines past the fuel tank pretty easily... especially if you drop the driver side strap and loosen the passenger side. Your fuel lines are probably very scaled rust and not a little bit rusty. sounds like an inspector that found a serious issue. you should thank him/her because if your line blows from rust weakening, just think of the ramifications that would have, especially when you just slammed on the brakes to avoid a child...

anyway. the only source for pre-bent lines would be OEM (chrysler) but I'm certain that they are obsolete. so you need to go to your local parts store and get the following. 25' coil of 3/16" steel brake line, a tubing cutter, a double flair kit, a hand full of 3/16, flair fittings, a couple unions (NOT compression fittings), a quart of Dot 3 brake fluid and a can of rust buster (WD-40, PB blaster, ect), pickup some extra strap clamps to attach the lines to the body incase yours are rusted.

get the van up on 4 solid jack stands, get some good safety glasses because rust in the eyes SUCKS. soak the bleeder screws in rust blaster. start replacing your lines. do one at a time so you don't mix up right and left. you can usually bend the lines by hand but be carful not to go overboard and kink them.

this is a solid full day job. you'll need a hand bleeding brakes and so on. I suggest you take out one line at a time as complete as possible. set it on the ground and use as a pattern for making the new lines.

the worst part of doing brake line work is that every time you touch something, another part brakes (like proportioning valve, hoses, bleeder screws, etc.) if you are intiminated by trying to do this right, bite the bullet and have a professional do it... I tell my students " I don't car if a car runs crappy, it better stop like new"

There are other options. If bending and flaring seems overwhelming. You could buy shorter sections of lines and use inverted flare nuts (not comptression fittings) to screw sections together. Lines can be had in 2, 3,4 and 5 or 6 foot sections. For the short runs one piece of the right length can be bent up to fit without cutting and flaring. For long runs just screw a few 6 foot sections together. I have found alot of parts stores don't know what an inverted flare nut is or they call them by differant names. But I do find if you tell them you want to screw 2 lines together they can ussually find them or realize they even stock them. These nuts were the only legal way to put lines together in PA when I inspected there. Compression fittings are not they leak. I would also recomend a bender instead of doing them by hand. With a little practice the bends will look better and it will not kink a line. Also if you have a long run that is mostley good with just a really bad spot using inverted flare nuts you can replace a bad spot with them. I had a 70 cougar I bought in about 82 and drove until 93 the last foot of the line going from front to back was rusted bad along with on line from the block on the rear to the left wheel cylinder. I made up a new line for the wheel cylinder and cut about 1 1/2 foot off the long line. I slid a fitting on the line and double flared it screwed on an inverted flare nut and made up a new line to finish the run back. I gave the car away in 2000 and never had a problem again with it.
Tim