S1 Brake Upgrade Safety Considerations

[GK]

Hi All,

Had the front left brake hose fail on me a few nights ago. Had the whole family in the car! We were coming to a low-speed stop at a set of lights, when the pedal kept going slowly to the floor! I thank God I realised very early and we were not in an emergency stopping situation. It could have been really horrific.

Turns out when I had the shocks replaced at Pedders last week, they didn't see that the hoses would be too tight if they placed the retaining rubber grommets on the hanging hook.

They of course put S1 shocks on, not noticing that the brakes (and therefore lines) were S2. The previous guy who replaced the shocks (same Pedders) knew of the problem and therefore left the hoses out, to give them plenty of free play. I guess he’d been in the game long enough to have been aware of it!

The second guy (1.6 years later) assumed whoever had installed the shocks in 2008 had left them off by mistake. Thankfully both brakes didn't fail or we could have been in real trouble.

I took the car to Brakes Plus yesterday to have both replaced, as I thought that it was simply a wear and tear issue. They actually damaged one of the replacement hoses themselves in the same manner. That was when I was notified that the failure was due to the hoses being pulled too tight with the steering movement. They ordered some special lines in that allow the hoses to move through the retaining grommets, so I won’t have the issue again. $350 later!

I called Pedders today to let them know of this issue and they’ll already in the process of putting a note in their system warning of the incompatibility of S1 shocks with S2-3 lines. That’s good news indeed for everyone who’s done the conversion. I’m now waiting on their State Manager to call me today to discuss some sort of financial compensation. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ll keep you posted.

GK

P.S If you get any suspension work done on your AU S1 with a S2+ brake conversion, please tell them about it and the potential brake hose problem.