Good grief, I know the gearheads have warned plenty of times to check and recheck brake hoses. Ours always looked the same. In my 20 year driving career, never had one break.

Today, one broke on MrsCrzydmnd. Thankfully she realized it in a drive thru, tried driving carefully a few blocks, had NOTHING. So being on a long stretch of road, she called me (almost 100 miles away) and I told her to stop with the e-brake, in neutral. She managed to get stopped safely in a parking spot and called the tow truck.

Enter me, getting home from work this evening, tried every tool in my bag to get the hardline broke loose from the rubber hose. Just mangled the whole mess. It gets towed to our favorite shop in the AM. Ironically the same shop thats going to install a new CV joint tomorrow anyways.

Moral of the story, pay attention when a gearhead tells you to check/change the hoses!

Glad to hear everyone was safe.

My personal recommendation for maintenance best practice is:
With every oil change rotate the tires, while the wheel is off inspect brakes, suspension and steering.

Sad part is most of the failures we are talking about are internal and only causing the caliper not to release fully.

Any time you happen to be under the car...it is always a good idea to take an extra couple moments to look things over.

And to add, when they fail internally they show no signs on the outside (errr...thanks Captain Obvious).

If you get symptoms of over-heating brakes or feel your brakes stick, I'd replace the lines first as they are cheapest, then the calipers if the lines do not fix the problem. I replaced my lines to find that the caliper was in fact sticking.

Is there a trick to unbolting it? I went and bought flare wrenches, both metric and standard, sprayed PBlaster on the fitting before I left to go get the wrenches and STILL managed to round the damn thing off. Mechanic pissed at me, understandably so. Car still in there. Guess it took em most of the day to change the CV joint and change the one brake hose cause it was so mangled.

I thought I was a pretty good wrench twister, but I knew I had no business in the suspension. Maybe I need to stay outta the brakes too

Frequently when the metal line fitting doesn't want to turn.. you hold it still and turn the other side. I find this helpful with fuel filters too.

In the brake line case..remove from caliper..then hold the metal line from twisting up..and unscrew the brake hose.