Pipe clip warning
HERE’S something I haven’t come across before. Series IIA in for a service, and on removing the rear brake drums I found that one of the brake cylinders was leaking fluid past the seals. This is not unusual. On most Land Rovers with beam axles, pipes run from the rear cylinders to a three-way union bolted to the top of the axle casing, with a flexible hose from there to a bracket on the chassis. These pipes were originally made from coated steel, but will almost invariably have been replaced with copper pipes by now. It is very common for the unions to be seized onto the pipe ends, so that when you try to undo the union at the cylinder it just twists the copper pipe. Heating the union and drowning it in releasing fluid will sometimes free it off, but more often than not I end up having to replace the rigid pipe. I have an old but good Sykes-pickavant brake pipe flaring tool which makes up very nice brake pipes in no time.
The rigid pipes run along the rear of the axle casing and over the top of the leaf springs. Series vehicles originally had fabric check straps bolted to the chassis and running underneath the axle in a U shape, to stop the axle dropping down too far in extreme off-road conditions and pulling the rear shock absorbers apart. To prevent the straps from rubbing on the brake pipes, thin steel guard plates were sandwiched between the axle and springs, with the brake pipe secured to the plates with P clips and rubber inserts. Few people bother to replace the check straps when they disintegrate, but the steel plates are usually still in place.
On this vehicle the P clips had been replaced with hard plastic snap clips of the type used to secure the brake lines to the chassis and bulkhead on most Land Rovers from the early 1980s onward. I could not free off the union at the cylinder end, and as I was struggling with it I noticed brake fluid dripping from the pipe around one of the clips. It turned out that the clip (designed for use with steel pipes) had cut almost all the way through the soft copper pipe, and when I twisted the pipe slightly, that was enough to finish the job.
I have never seen this type of pipe failure, or even visible wear or damage, where hard plastic clips have been used to secure a copper brake pipe to the chassis or bulkhead. Presumably the location of this particular clip, in an exposed position and subject to a fair amount of vibration, will have contributed to the failure. If you have brake pipes secured to an axle or mounting plate using these clips I would strongly suggest that you discard the clips and fit P clips instead, either rubber lined metal or flexible plastic of the correct internal diameter (4.8 mm or 3/16 inch). This vehicle, like most pre-1980 Series Land Rovers, had single line brakes and came very close to a total brake failure that normal inspection and servicing procedures would have failed to prevent.