Aw, c'mon, help a buddy out!

 

Ross, just curious.....what is the I.D. of that hose and the PSI rating?

 

Guys, a while back there was a discussion about an eBay vendor selling brake lines and one of the big objections to buying from this guy was his hoses were not DOT approved. Do the hydraulic hose guys' brake hoses have DOT approval? Not trying to be a pain but I remember a lot of posters getting all up in arms about it. I think regular hydraulic hoses for general applications. like lift buckets and such, may not matter to the DOT but I have to wonder if you're involved in an accident and it's found you didn't use DOT hoses your insurance might not like it too much. I'm not saying it's not important how other hydraulic hoses are made, heck, I've made good money building control systems that test hydraulic systems. My customers spend a lot, really a lot of money building these test systems so I know they're important.

Just wondering.

I also had the brakes relined locally for my F-2 and '37 Buick. I couldn't find anyone at the time who carried the F-2 brakes. NAPA told me they would send them out, I asked where and saved a few bucks going to the place myself. On my Buick I found a place on line but they wanted something like $100 per axle, plus shipping, the local place charged me $12 a shoe. The took a few bucks of a shoe because I removed the old lining and blasted the shoes before I took them in.

 

The bill of material list the hose as 1/8" ID. The rating isn't on the hoses directly.

This same issue came up on the Porsche forum I frequent, because virtually all those guys go to SS braided lines and they are specifically offered in DOT and non-DOT versions. Note that the issue in that discussion was that Canadian registration inspections specifically target non-OEM parts on safety-related systems, and if the SS hoses don't have a tag saying they are DOT, the car gets red-carded.

The hoses on mine have "DOT-GY-10/11 - HL" printed on them. The GY means Goodyear, 10/11 is the date of mfr., the HL is an SAE / FMVSS spec. (GY 5056 1/8 Hydraulic Brake Hose | Goodyear® Engineered Products)

The gist of it on the Porsche forum is, and I verified this, DOT doesn't approve a damn thing. Manufacturers can claim DOT compliance by doing testing and using materials specified by SAE, but DOT doesn't review the test results and issue a piece of paper that says "We Approve These". (Why would a gov't agency go out on a limb?! LOL)

Anything custom-made by definition won't be exactly "DOT Certified" but it can use all the components and materials and be manufactured exactly the same as one that has been thru the testing process.

From the discussion on the other forum:
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What is the difference between lines that are “DOT compliant” and “DOT approved”?

The United States Department of Transportation DOT has established numerous standards for automotive components and subsystems. The regulation for brake hoses happens to be FMVSS106. In this document, anything and everything pertaining to automotive brake hoses has been laid out in gory detail – at least, those things important to the federal government.

If a manufacturer claims their SS lines are “DOT compliant”, it means that their SS lines have passed all FMVSS106 requirements, and they have submitted the test data to the government for official certification. This does not mean they are acceptable for use on your car, but it does mean they pass the government minimum standards.

Another term you may hear in this context is “DOT approved.” However, the DOT is not in the business of actually approving or disproving compliance – they don’t typically run any tests on aftermarket components themselves. Under these circumstances, one can only surmise that these manufacturers are trying to state that their lines are actually “DOT compliant”, but it never hurts to ask before you buy.

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Ross,

I know all about compliances. I own an industrial control panel shop. I'm a UL shop and have to meet UL standards to be able to put the little UL sticker inside. As long as the control system is a standard design everything usually goes OK, but not always. Some times my customers will ask me to incorporate parts from premade controls from machines they sell. I try to verify what I want to do is acceptable by UL, or if not, what I have to do to be accepted. It takes numerous phone calls and emails to get any information. One guy will pass it to another and he'll pass it to another and so. When I do finally find someone who can give me an answer I'll aks that person to summarize what he said in an email so I have some record. You should hear the hemming and hawing before they'll agree to do it. No one wants to put their neck on the line.

CE is another fiasco. It's not like UL, there's no official body that will label anything CE, it's a self compliance program. I can label anything CE but once it gets to Europe and if it doesn't meet CE compliance it's shipped back at my expense. So you have to hire a person to check out your design to see if you meet CE compliance. They charge a minimum of $2-3K just to come over and then around $200/hr to do the work. None of them will guarantee that your machine will comply with CE so you're still taking a chance.

 

I'm not sure I answered your question, I realized. The direct answer would be "no" they aren't DOT compliant, because they're custom. Would any hoses made by a local vendor be compliant? Only as far as materials and methods, but obviously no testing is performed.

I can't believe anyone would go looking under any of our trucks after an accident to verify everything was compliant. Maybe if you had something obvious like SS braided lines, but even then, I don't believe the local cops go thru cars like on CSI or NCIS.

PS -- I ran into UL issues frequently too. Boilers would come in with (specified) UL label on the control cabinet, but they are only useful if there is a connection to the building's management system, which was usually done thru a relay. We couldn't ever get the boiler mfr's to install the relay, but if the installation contractor put the relay in the cabinet, it would void the UL label. If he put it outside the cabinet in its own enclosure, it triggered some Factory Mutual beef. Happened over and over and over. And god forbid the cabinet didn't have a Union label...

 

Ross,

I think if there was a high enough claim, or death, that occured because of an accident it's not the police I would be concerned about but the insurance companies. If they had to pay out I'd bet they'd turn over every rock to find a way to place blame on some one else involved. I'm probably over analying the situation, I have no experience or knowledge of the legal or insurance practices, it's just a thought I had.

Another side note about UL. I have customers specifying UL panels, I build them to UL specs and have the UL inspector come to my shop to inspect my panels which cost me a minimum of $500. After everything is OK I ship the panels off. I then go to the installation site where the end user contracts another party to have them physically installed, and find the panels hacked into and altered. Once they leave my shop there is nothing I can do to insure they maintain their UL compliance.