Brake master (Nissin radial) and brake hose fabrication.
Before purchasing a brake hose, it’s worth thinking it through carefully. Often they end up too long, or the banjo fitting layout is awkward—poor workability, bad looks, and all that. Seeing hoses get thrown away as a result, I found myself thinking, “Maybe this is how the economy keeps turning?”
First, we don’t use the bracket that comes with Nissin, so we fabricated our own. (Though it’s nothing fancy.)
How you attach aftermarket parts changes the final result. Since we basically never make the same thing twice, each one develops its own character.
I think it’s better to fix the TEE-FIT in place. With just cable ties, it doesn’t float properly and rubs in various spots, which can look surprisingly sad.
We cover it with a double layer of shrink tubing and braided sleeve. The braided sleeve alone can be replaced if needed.
Stretched out plus a bit, with a gentle sag curve, it fits nicely.
We’ll fabricate the rear hose too.
Every time I make one, I find myself thinking, “I want to do something we haven’t tried before,” and I puzzle over it with a catalog in hand. This time we went with a 90-degree vent banjo plus my favorite short straight banjo.
On the master side, it drops straight down to hide the hose.
The hose layout looks beautiful too.
The caliper side faces the opposite direction from stock. If it faced the same way, the exhaust heat would warm it—bad. So we point it forward.
As for fitting choice—the fitting stood up too much, so we ruled it out. That left three options: ST-BJ, STS-BJ, or 20-degree BJ. The 20-degree BJ sits too close to the nipple, making fluid changes difficult. The ST-BJ kinks the hose too hard. So we went with STS-BJ.
We actually hold the fitting in place and lay out the hose to decide. Every time, we build it this way, quietly and carefully.
By the way, using a custom swaged line is quite a bit harder and more difficult. (It inevitably gets too long, and you can’t picture the finished result.)
We also fixed a spot that was starting to fray.
That wraps it up.
