I have been working on another Jeep lately (a 7), but it requires cleaning everything first due to all the crud, and since it has been too cold to be getting wet outside, I decided to work on this one some more.
When I had the front fenders off a few months ago, I noticed how bad the front rubber brake lines looked, so I bought 3 new rubber brake lines (two for the front, one for the back). Finally got around to swapping them.
It may look nice and sunny, but the temperature was around 24 when I started working!!!!!!!!!!!
Front brake lines had some bad cracks/splits:
And the three old, probably OEM, lines removed:
While not "technically challenging", the lack of rust on the fittings made this easy. I was able to get all brake lines off and replaced without damaging the OEM frame mounted hard brake line/connectors.
The rear brake line was a bit of a PIA to get to, due to all my fuel pump stuff, but still only took about 10 minutes to swap:
And of course, you always find some other problem while working on the original problem. When I was swapping out the front brake lines, I noticed both calipers were loose. On the passenger side, I found this:
Not the best picture. On the passenger side, the rubber caliper bushings that go around the mounting bolts must have fell apart, so the previous owner wrapped the bolts in electrical tape LOL. Probably a good trail fix. Luckily, I had some spare bushings. When I got to the driver side, there was not tape, only a sticky/rubbery mess, I presume the bushings fell apart. So, a trip to the store for some more caliper hardware, and all fixed up, maybe........
Before I changed the brake lines, I noticed a small, weird brownish colored puddle on the garage floor, under the firewall area. I "hoped" it was the washer reservoir bottle leaking, but I wasn't that lucky. The master cylinder sprung a leak, which of course dripped right on to the bottom of the inner fender, stripping the paint clean off:
DOT 3 must be the best paint stripper in the world LOL. Good news, it only stripped the paint off the flat, triangle piece of the inner fender pictured. Fire wall, frame, and the rest of the inner fender are fine, so not going to cry about it too much.
I kept some old master cylinder lines off one of my many projects, cut them down to length, super great master cylinder bleeding tubes:
TA-DA, new brake lines and master cylinder:
I am going to presume the master cylinder must have had a slow leak for awhile, maily due to the stripped off paint on the booster. Also, when I pulled the old master cylinder off, the cavity between the MS and the booster was pretty wet.