How To: C15a Wire-3 restoration

[Grant Bowker]

My thought on stainless was that, yes it does cost more but in the big scheme of the cost of restoring a complete vehicle I could live with the extra and the line would be unlikely to deteriorate either inward or outward (even if I wasn't as diligent as ideal about flushing the fluid to eliminate accumulated moisture). It does come down to personal choice, bundy, conifer, stainless - all have merits/advantages.
I think everyone has a favorite brake line flaring tool and a corresponding hated one. The tool I used on the stainless lines is sold by Eastwood and many others. I have never had it do an unusable or leaky flare. Call it luck, lack of operator skill with the other tools used... your choice. It is very much intended to be used clamped in a vice - not an on-vehicle tool although there are tools that use similar dies and should work on vehicle. I did think it extravagant to spend that much on a single purpose and rarely used tool but certainly appreciate the lack of aggravation doing a flare, discovering it is poor, cutting it off, redoing (maybe more than once), discovering the line is now too short to fit..... One observation about this style of tool compared to the "standard" bar clamp and screwdown flaring die is that it does require a bit more distance between the flare and the last bend in the line if the line is being bent before flaring.