1450 Hydraulic Line Break - Need Advice
 

Hello all,

I posted several months ago that my 1450 had developed a significant leak and that I believed it to be in the vicinity of the pump. After receiving excellent advice, I tore it all apart, split the tractor, replaced the front seal on the pump and the cork gasket between the pump and transaxle. (I had already confirmed the leak was not coming from the relief valves). I replaced many other gaskets and worn parts while I had it apart, and today I completed reassembly and attempted to drive it out of my garage.

As it turns out, all of the above was probably unnecessary as anything other than a learning exercise. Apparently in re-tightening one of the hydraulic hard lines to the pump, I must have aggravated the leak to the point where I can now see fluid gushing out of the break in the line when I start the tractor. I guess it went from a pin-hole to a tear.

My questions are these:

Can I disconnect both of these lines, cap each hole at the pump, and operate the tractor as normal save for having a hydraulic lift? I don't use it for mowing. It mainly serves as a work horse to pull a large garden cart around my property for various chores.

Second, because I would like the lift this winter for my snow blade - what is the easiest way to replace this line? Should I get new steel tubing and a bender and whatever else is necessary to flare the ends, etc? Or should I replace with flexible hydraulic lines?

I have limited experience with hydraulics, but I'm willing to learn. I'll admit that I'm feeling a little disheartened at the moment, and I'd appreciate any and all advice.

I've attached a picture of the offending line with an arrow pointing to the leak/tear.

Thank you all!

Might be possible to replace a section of pipe with a union. It needs to be appropriate for the hydraulic pressure.

Best to look for a used line as a replacement.
If you disconnect the lines you will have to have a jumper line to reconnect the ports back together.

Making/bending a new line on your own would be very difficult due to the tight bends in the lines so close to the fittings and probably requires special equipment to produce bends this tight with the fittings in place.

You may be able to replicate the S curve in the line line using elbows etc and splice back into the remaining tube where it is straight using a compression fittimng But beware of the clearance needed for the driveshaft fan.

Here go....
https://www.ebay.com/itm/27451626976...IAAOSwjsBfdbvj

Am wondering if you couldn't take it off and head for a tractor place,
anyone selling and working on them. They could possibly duplicate it
for you. If not it looks like 30 dollars would be a good start to get you
back up and going.

Ken

Where are you in PA? I've got some here at Brookville, PA, I'd sell.

I'm in north Pittsburgh, but I could see my way up there happily if you have the line I need. It doesn't look like the ones on ebay will work - the one I need is the one with the flashlight pointing at it below...

Let me know, thanks!

So I've decided to purchase a cheap 37-degree flaring tool and a roll of 3/8" nickel-copper brake line to replicate this tube myself. I've done some research and it seems like this sort of line should take the pressure just fine and I should basically be able to bend it by hand. If anyone has any advice and/or thinks this is a terrible idea before I get started, I'd be happy to hear it. Otherwise, I'll update on my progress this weekend.

I believe the tubes need to be double flared
Good luck with that "cheap" tool.

I believe you'll need the proper bending tools to avoid kinking the tubes. You might not be able to accomplish as tight as the bends in the original part but you should be able to route A-B destination.

You can Silver solder or braze your broken line, I don't recommend it as it will prolly break again in that location, but will work for a while.
You will not double flair the line because you will be reusing your old fittings and sleeves ( unless you choose to purchase new Hyd. --parker style fittings)
the sleeve takes the place of a double flair in tubing work.
Use an old ball bat in your vice to "pull" the line around to make bends
And I mean pull with both hands, hard!!
If you try to just push the line around diameters you will kink it.
Your inexpensive bender might work, but as mentioned you will not make small factory bends without machined dies in a tubing bender machine.
The tightest bends you can make are about the radius of the big end of a ball bat or your bender.
Do buy a 60-72" length piece of brake line, as you will scrap a few of your first bends.
I guarantee your line will not have factory looking mandrel bends, but long flowing radiuses direct the fluid just as good as tight bends just not as purdy!
Do put your nut on first and then your sleeve, the flair, then try your luck at bending your tubing in that order.
You can straighten the tube back straight if you don't kink it.
A minor kink can be straightened with a hammer but not one that impedes the flow of the fluid.
When your done you will hopefully have something that will work, just not look anything remotely like factory.
When it is all said & done it will not be less expensive than factory used lines.
But you will have satisfaction and learned something.
I bent a lot of lines putting power steering on my 782 and 1650 using the ball bat as a radius.
Guess what? they work just fine.:beerchug:

You can use a small diameter pulley as well. It helps support the sides and somewhat prevents flattening. Place the pulley in a vice with the tube pulled against the nut. If you can fill the tube with dry beach sand and plug the ends it will reduce the crushing. Heating a little with a propane torch helps.

Or you could check ebay for a 3/8" tube bender and do a good job. I've collected from 1/4" to 5/8' over the years for very little money.

But I agree, that a set of used tubes is the cheapest and easiest solution.

I was quite serious when I made the suggestion that a tractor shop
could make one of the lines. Now I am wondering if I had no idea what
I was talking about. It happened once before,:biggrin2:
Is it not possible for someone to duplicate these lines? Is it a do yourself
or ebay only fix.

Ken

The factory lines are made on machined dies, in a press, so the radiuses are close and tight with no kinks.
If one ever replaced brake or fuel lines on a vehicle, you know a tight close bend results in a kink.
Hand operated benders only allow for the radius to be a gentle one.
The larger the tubing diameter, the larger the radius.
If you ever looked at an exhaust system you can see marks where the mandrels were clamped to the pipe to keep it from kinking.
The mandrels keep the pipe from kinking while bending.
Of course an exhaust system works more efficient with long flowing bends.

If there is enough room for the first flowing bend to clear the fan ,prolly one can make the next one along the frame, towards the front.
When I made lines for my power steering conversion, I retained the factory lines from/to the hydro, but custom bent lines to the spool valve, steering cyl and steering unit.
One can make some awful pretty lines/bends using a hand bender, but one has to allow room for the bends as they are not going to be tight radiuses like bends made in a die.
Hope this explains things.:bigthink:

If you want to get a tight radius possible, maybe you can invest in an nice Swagelok bender which can get down to 15/16" radius:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Swagelok-3-...-127632-2357-0

Is your 1450 a dual stick or single?
You need to look for the correct replacement line for your application, whichever it is.
Specify dual spool of single spool.
They are out there I'm sure.

What an enlightening thread all the way around, sorry Swendson that
it is at your expense. Hope you get it sorted out for sure.
George, thanks for the concise walk through the process.
Somebody out there has to be making similar parts, brake shop?

Ken

These people make custom brake lines for most everything and they are quality.:beerchug:
They prolly could duplicate cub hyd lines, at a cost that would be reasonable but not inexpensive as it is a custom thing.
I have used a set of their Stainless lines on a '90 chevy suburban some years back.
Fit and finish were perfect, sorry I don't remember the price.
if you want you can read their WWW. FAQ's
https://www.inlinetube.com/
Sorry it is sort of off track, but totally related.

Ol' George, I must thank you for your encouraging advice. I could not find a factory replacement tube that looked like the one on my tractor (I compared my line to the ebay link provided above as well as many I found on the sponsored sites, to no avail). I ended up spending about $90 on Amazon for a (cheap) flange tool and a roll of the 3/8" nickel-copper tubing. It only took me two hours to make a couple of test flanges and experiment with bending the tubing, and I ended up with a functional tractor.

After another 30 minutes to get the gas tank back on, I fired her up and there was no more spewing hydro fluid. As you mentioned, it definitely doesn't look factory, but it has plenty of clearance to the rag joint and the fan, and after running for about 3-4 minutes there are no apparent leaks. I'm more than happy that this is finally behind me and I can go back to using my tractor and move on to other projects. Its almost midnight here and I have a few learning points I feel might be worthwhile to share with the class (and pictures) in case anyone needs to attempt a similar fix in the future, and I'll make another post in the next few days. Again, thank you to all for the advice and encouragement.

This turned out to be key. I have a dual spool model, and ALL the replacement tubes I found were for single spool models. See the picture below of my original line. I'm sure there might be some used ones somewhere, but I didn't find them after 1-2hrs searching.

The biggest problem I had with my fix was finding an affordable flaring tool for 37 degree flares - there are gobs of cheap Chinese tools under $30 for making 45s, but I ended up spending almost $60 on the cheapest 37 degree tool Amazon had to offer. See photos, it worked fine despite plenty of reviews that said it was crap. It turns out if you go slow and be careful this is a pretty hard thing to screw up.

Nickel copper is pretty easy to bend, even just by hand. I also used some wood blocks in my vice and just worked the line around slowly until I had roughly the "S" shape I needed. I did end up scrapping my first tries because I ended up needing much less length than the original.

I made a couple of test flares on the scraps until I was confident that my flares looked close to the originals. Next I put on the fittings, flared both ends, and connected the first end to the spool. I was then able to bend the line in place until I got it to where I could connect the other end to the pump. Then I just had to bend it a little more to get clearance to the fan and rag joint.

All in all, this was way easier than I expected. If you ever need to replace a line like this and it doesn't need to look pretty, I highly recommend this option.

Again, thanks to all and good luck with your own projects.

FWIW: *37 flares are correct for hyd. lines and you did well using it.
From many many years of leak free experience, a*45 flare on the line works just fine on *37 fittings, as the flared line, conforms to the fitting of *37.
I do tighten/loosen the flair nut several times before the final tightening.
I would not use it on an aircraft or space shuttle but for anything else, I don't hesitate:beerchug: