Somehow, by the grace of god I guess..... this happened in my DRIVEWAY, not on the road, but it is NOT something I want happening AGAIN!

My brakes started getting soft about 2 weeks ago, which I thought was strange, but I convinced myself that a combination of a change in engine vacuum, and just my imagination were most likely to blame. Last night I went to start my truck, foot on the clutch, foot on the brake........ the brake pedal goes straaaaaight to the floor, no pop, no resistance. Pumping doesn't work, I start my engine to get power brakes, that does nothing, left it over night, same thing this morning.

Popped the hood, reservoir was empty, crawled underneath, and pretty quickly found the problem. The T junction on the rear axle was dripping. On closer inspection it was only one of the outputs, the one for the passenger side rear brake line. Before I even got a wrench to undo the fitting, I noticed how loose the line felt. I tried to twist the threaded nut fitting itself, and that was tight, but the steel line JUST PULLED RIGHT OUT! The flared end had broken CLEAN off, inside the fitting nut! Nothing was rusty, nothing has been hit or bent! The line simply broke right off of the flared cone end, right where they meet.

I want to make sure this never happens again, for obvious reasons, so I need to find out what in the world causes something like that? Do I just have that one fluke piece with a manufacturing flaw? Did the kid that put it on before me overtorque it? The line was supported, tight and firm to the axle with closely spaced clips. WHAT THE HELL?!

Thanks for any info, AleX

 

I was going to say vibration due to unsuported pipe but you covered that right at the end of your post.
My guess would be, poor quality pipe or incorrectly made flare or over tightening of pipe nut or even wrong/bad pipe nut.

 

Ya the guys at the parts store agreed, just a manufacturing flaw. They said that's exactly why you use flared lines in the first place, so that they don't break or come loose.

Interested to hear if anyone else has had this happen?