LJW1984

I have a HUGE suspicion that my psychotic ex or one of his friends cut my brake line. I have a fairly good amount of vehicle knowledge and after picking up my daughter for a lunch date I suddenly had NO brakes. Thankfully I was in town and driving slow enough and know how to handle that type of situation. My brakes were working perfectly fine the day before and I know that if I had a slow leak etc that my vehicle would somehow let me know. I had NO warning signs, no slow loss in ability to use the brakes, no warning light NOTHING. Finally get home and sure enough after having my husband look at it the line is "broken". After finding out that my husband's boss had hired my psycho ex, his best friend and his cousin I started getting worried. I KNOW I shouldn't all of a sudden have no brakes especially with no damage (no rocks flying up and hitting it, no curb checks, no running over any wild animals). After pulling the line off it was almost fully split into two pieces. Looking at it there's no where near enough rust/ corrosion and it looks too "clean" almost like it has been cut. My husband swears that it's just normal wear and tear but where the "break" is located and not enough rust doesn't convince me. Am I just being paranoid? Or did someone really cut my brake line? I'm not being a typical female saying "oh I have a psycho ex" Him and his entire family really are psychotic and I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this. Is there any 100% way to tell?

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

Brake lines typically fail suddenly not over time, They reach a point to where the pressure exceeds the lines ability to contain it and when it fails you have sudden pressure lose. Many times line rust from the inside due to moisture contamination so you won't see much rust on the outside, I've seen lines with no rust on the outside of the line burst because the inside was weakened due to corrosion. An experienced mechanic can look at the line at the point of failure and tell you right away what the cause was. Cut lines are usually pretty easy to spot, Can you post a picture of it?

wssix99

iTrader: (5)

Pictures would be good, but probably hard to tell.

What kind of car is this for? Are we talking about the front brake lines? If this is a LS1 Firebird or Camaro and we are talking about the original flexible front brake lines, then this car would be in the danger zone and it would be highly likely that they failed on their own.

The flexible rubber brake lines in the front take a beating. The rubber deteriorates and gets brittle over time and they flex constantly (like a paper clip) every time the wheel turns. If a 20 year old car hasn't had these replaced by now, it should. (Even a arage-kept car that is never driven.) I replace these lines with every major brake service. (When I replace the calipers, usually around 100K-150K miles on most cars.)