1450 Hydraulic Line Break - Need Advice

[ol'George]

Originally Posted by swensond

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