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Anyone have experience with prebent steel brake lines from vintage power wagons or Midwest military? Is either on better then the other? Thanks, Erik

No experience here. But. I thought just maybe I would escape the brake line debacle getting my 37 back to usable condition. Ive done plenty to it. While I had the brakes apart for replace/rebuild, I added solvent to the open brake lines and blew them out. I had baggies over every open end so I could determine the amount of crap being blown out. None, really. But went to change one last rubber flex line and the adjacent steel brake line crumbled at the fitting.

Done. So I am remaking every vent, fuel and brake line on my truck.

Which brings me to your comment/question.

With all the work involved on doing a proper replace of hard lines, I could not justify to myself installing steel lines, I NEVER want to revisit changing all these lines out again, and if I can save the next three owners that "treat", bonus.

I bought all C3N cooper nickel hard lines. Impervious to salt, rust etc. Bought the spiral armor for the lines. If you look you can get it in stainless steel, which I did.

It costs more than the steel replacement lines but I think the long service life will be worth it.

I used the steel lines from Midwest Military. The premium shipping VPW tacks on to shipping brake lines was a non-starter for me. Midwest sent them to me and the shipping was about $10 through UPS.

The fit is good. You'll need to make some small adjustments, but otherwise I had no problems with the fit.
I did have a big problem with one of the flares not sealing properly, but I can't say if that's because of the line quality or something I did. I ended up having to cut the flare off and have it re-flared by a mechanic friend of mine.

You'll need to buy new straight line connections (you'll need 2 or 3 total, I don't remember), but those can be had at O'Reilly for about $3.00.

PM me if you have any questions about the install specifically. It took me an afternoon to do and wasn't that bad to be honest.

Addendum: If you're going to do the brakes, consider using DOT5 brake fluid. It's more expensive, but it is also hydrophobic and won't ruin paint the way DOT3 or DOT4 will. Additionally, for the rubber hoses I used NAPA parts. NAPA part name / part number: 19.5" Brake Line UP 4000, 17.5" Brake Line UP 4900

I have John's brake and fuel line sets. Neither are installed yet but both appear to be top-quality, precision-bent. quality parts.
Gary

I have the set John sells installed. It wasn't a hard job to do. And that on a filthy old truck, fully assembled and on the ground. (I didn't need to jack it up to do it.) Doing it on a clean truck or one disassembled would be a couple hours max. I still had less than 8 hours in the entire job. Fuel and brake.
I did it because the fuel lines were junk. Since they run together, I decided to do it all at one shot.