(engine revving) - Last time we went to the desert it became quickly apparent
that the e-brake in the E36 wasn't gonna work with me. I couldn't get my hand on it in time. So the question became,
what do we do about it? We fix it, we fix the whole thing. (engine revving) (screaming)
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a sick E36 like we did on eBay Motors. Now, let's get back to the Money Pit. (playful music) All right, so as a quick reminder, we bought this 98 BMW E36. It's a 328i, and the AC
actually still works. But we've been modifying it to be a fun budget-minded
off-road rally inspired car. Now, of course you can drive a stock car off-road to some success, but we want this thing
to be better than that. We want it to look better than that, we want it to be much
more reliable than that. So we've been installing and testing different rally inspired modifications, and determining whether or not they've been worth all the time, money, and effort they take to install. And today is no different, we're gonna be doing now
the hydraulic e-brake. So, let's get into it. If you watch any footage of professional rally or drift drivers, you'll often see him grabbing for a lever that isn't the shifter when they initiate a slide,
that's a hydraulic e-brake. And all that does is allow
them to lock up the rear tires, and initiate a spin or
a rotation of the car. Now in drifting, that's usually about
steez and looking good, but in rally, it can
often be the quickest way to get around a corner, especially like a hairpin turn. When you're driving on dirt, you really don't have that much grip. And so if you just try to
steer a really tight corner, you'll usually end up under steering, you kind of plow straight through. So the easiest way to
remedy that is by installing a way to easily and repeatedly
lock up your rear wheels, so you can initiate spin on command. So, that's what we're gonna do, that's what the E36 needs. Now, let's go take a
look at what I bought. I actually honestly kind
of bought the wrong thing. (chuckling) But it's gonna work. All right, so let's look at
what we got and what you need if you wanna install a
hydro e-brake in your car. First off the tools. We've got a flaring kit, so
we can flare some brake lines. And then of course, we've
got some brake line. On the E36, 3/16, that's what
they use or 4.75 millimeters, so that's what this is. And then we've got an
assortment of flare nuts that we'll flare onto the tube. These are how you connect brake lines. And so that all should be pretty easy. But the main thing you need,
the piece de resistance, is the hydro itself. And this is where I
bought the wrong thing. At first glance when I bought this, probably really late at night, it seemed really cool. I was like, oh wow, twin cylinder so you don't have to
tee it after the fact, you just run your single
line into the hydro, and then you can run out to
each individual rear caliper. But that's not what this is at all. This is actually a cutting break. This is more for off-roading. So you can lock up an
individual rear wheel and force the thing to
kind of spin around that to turn tightly. I think it's gonna be okay. We're just gonna plug
one of the cylinders, and use the upper one, and then tee it off
like you normally would when you install a hydro. But all in all, it should
be not too difficult. A little time consuming
though, so let's get going. So the first thing we're gonna do is just kind of sit in here
for a minute with the old hydro and kind of mock it up, hold it in some different
places, see what I think, keeping in mind I've
got some interior bits that I would like to be
able to put back in here. So, I think it's gonna
be something like this. This thing, as far as I'm
concerned, this can go. So, I think that's gonna go, and then we're gonna
mount something like this. Maybe build it off a little
bit so it's out here. Cool. Well, now I need to go look at what kind of
metal I have laying around and cut some up and make a little bracket. It should it be pretty easy
with the tools I have on hand, I'm just basically gonna
make a little shelf for this thing to sit on, I think we go to something like this. And that should be plenty
sturdy and pretty easy. Let's do it. (groans)
(metal clanging) Just chop a little piece
out of somewhere over here. All right, I gotta get
the plasma cutter ready, which means I need some air
pressure and the plasma cutter. So I'm about to plasma cut
this eighth inch steel, which is pretty convenient for me because plasma cutting is pretty easy, it's pretty quick way
to get through metal. But it's definitely not the
only way to get through metal. You could make this bracket
with just an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel on it,
potentially a sawzall, bandsaw, there's a lot of ways to get this done, not just a plasma cutter. The plasma cutters are
pretty cheap these days, so if you do cut a lot of metal, maybe think about picking one up. It's really handy and super fun to use. You're basically cutting metal with fire, and that's, I mean, I think we can all agree
that it's pretty cool. So let's do it, let's cut some. (groans) (upbeat music)
(plasma cutter whistling) Okay, major piece cut. We'll clean it up a little
bit on the old sander once it cools down. (upbeat music)
(sander buzzing) (metal clanging) All right, it's not
this was very difficult, I just had to cut out a little rectangle, and now we've got one cut out. And it looks like it's gonna
do exactly what we want. I think what I'm gonna
do is weld some studs to this rectangle we just cut so that I can just mount
this thing with nuts and not have to worry about
getting any hardware underneath 'cause in at least one spot, that would be a really tricky. Okay, so I think I'm
gonna drill four holes where I marked my spots for the e-brake. Drill holes about six millimeters in size, pop these bolts through, cut the heads off, weld them, and then I have four studs. (metal clanging) Cool. Now, we just grind those welds flush so it sits nice on the tunnel, then I got a couple of holes cut out for just like little spot welds, and we'll weld kind of the
perimeter a little bit as well. Should be plenty sturdy, we'll see if we even need to brace it. (grinder buzzing)
(upbeat music) Okay. Now, we just gotta get rid
of some paint in that area and then we can weld. Coming right along. (grinder buzzing) Oh yeah, I think that's gonna be it. (welding machine buzzing) Oh yeah! Now that is sturdy. It's not going anywhere. Cool. Now we can run some lines. (upbeat music) All right, now we got the car in the air. So now it's time to trace our lines from the master cylinder
to the rear calipers. So we're gonna find the line that comes from the master
and goes to the rears. The rear line, the singular rear line comes out of the master
and just goes straight into like the ABS traction control module. So, to get to the individual line, to run to the e-brake like I want to, I'm actually just gonna bypass ABS and traction control altogether, which for the rear wheels,
especially, it's fine by me. So I'm just gonna remove this line here that comes out of the port on
the master cylinder labeled H. H is rear and V is front. So I'm gonna remove the line
that's going to the H port, that goes ultimately to the rears. So remove that and then
I'll make a new line that just goes down, bypasses
ABS and traction control, and goes into the cabin
right behind the handbrake. And I think I have all the
fittings that I need to do this. So, let's do it. So, I've got this straight piece of line. This is six millimeter tubing
with M12 by one fittings here, with a bubble flare, a DIN/ISO flare. This is the European way, this a metric piece of brake tubing in that it's metric
tubing, metric fitting, and the bubble flare is metric too. Generally, there's two
major types of flares; there's bubble and then there's standard. Most American things will get standard, most of European things will get bubble. So that's what we have here. So this will be the piece
from the master cylinder to kind of underneath the car, and then we'll make a line from underneath the car to inside the car. Now they do have, they do make specific tools for bending brake lines and small tubing, and when you know it, I don't have one. So, we're just gonna do it by hand with stuff we have laying around. I've got some dies right here that are of different diameters. So, I can use these and just
trying to keep even pressure, trying to make sure not
to kink these things, I'll just do it by hand and we should be able to
turn out a decent result. And then maybe down the road, I'll get the right tool, you know. (upbeat music) (paper crumpling) Woo! Line. This is 3/16, which is
also usable in metric because metrics step below
a six millimeter line is a 4.76 millimeter line. And 3/16 is 4.75 millimeters. This stuff bends real nice, so I'm just gonna feed it through my hole. (line whistling) Satisfying. All right, so now that we've
got our length figured out, we can remove the whole line once I cut through it
with my tubing cutter. And then we take it to
the bench and flare it. This comes with a flaring kit, it's a little chamfering tool. So we're just gonna hit that in there, get them burrs off. Now, before your flare, don't forget your flare
nut or your tube nut. This has to go on first
because once you flare the end, it can't come off this way. Now sure, if you only flare one end, you can get it on from the other side, but don't live that life. Don't live like that. Put it on first, remember, then flare. Trust me, it's way more fun that way. Like I said earlier, this has a BMW, so on this car is a bubble flare. But the adapter I'm using
to go into the handbrake is gonna be a standard 3/16. So on this end, we'll do a standard flare, on this end, we'll do a bubble flare. I just have to remember that. I just have to remember that. So, the first thing I'm gonna do is insert our tubing through
this little grippy block here, these two Allens tighten
down to grip the tube. The tube needs to protrude
through this little block, a pretty specific amount. So you wanna line it up, I want it to be sticking
out the same amount as the height of that
largest diameter bit. So now this is our bubble die, this is for this size tubing and it's meant to make a bubble flare. So that's gonna go in there like that. Now we're gonna screw this unit over top of the whole situation. Okay, now, we just need to
drive this screw down in and that will produce the flare. Okay, that should do it. And there we have a bubble flare. Now, we gotta do a standard
flare on this side. Now we'll drive the top down
for our first operation. Now, that's basically
a bubble flare there. Now we're just gonna screw
this back on like so, and drive this guy in with no die. Okay, and that is your
more standard double flair. So, that is basically a line made. We've got a bubble flare here, a double flare here, and now we just gotta
put it in the old car. (upbeat music) Okay, so we've got this little adapter. This goes from the thread at
the back of the handbrake, the inlet for the handbrake, to our 3/16 standard tube nut here. Now, this is NPT or national pipe thread. That means it's a tapered thread. So that means it gets thread sealant. And tapered threads are
never going to bottom out like a standard straight thread fastener. The threads in that taper is
what ultimately stops them and you can overpower it. Eddie knows. All right, now we've got our line from the master cylinder into the car and into the handbrake. And I just plugged off
the lower cylinder here that we're not gonna be using. Now, it's time to make a line that goes from the upper cylinder that we are gonna be using that will come down and
split, it'll tee off, and then it'll go into the rear calipers. So that'll get some sealant in a minute, but for now, just stick it in there. Okay, so I'm just gonna leave
this line a little bit long, I'll probably put the tee
somewhere up in this area, but I'm just gonna leave extra length and cut it from the inside
and figure that out next. Okay, so these are factory lines we're gonna be splicing into. This one goes to the driver's side, this one to the passenger's side. And I'm just gonna cut them, kind of stagger it and run
my tee into those lines to send hydro power to the rear brakes. All right, so this is the
final piece of the plumbing, I hope that everything is plumbed up, and we can put some fluid
in it and bleed the thing. Now, obviously this isn't super difficult, it's just time-consuming
and a little fiddly, but it's not the worst thing. It's definitely something
that can be done on a weekend, and depending on your cars set
up, potentially even quicker. This is taking more time
because it's individual lines from the engine bay all the way back. But if it was a single line
that teed off at the rear, it's even quicker, 'cause
you can just go boom, one line in one line out. I gotta be on a plane in a few hours, so really hoping for no leaks. (wrench buzzing) Now we bleed. All right, I'm gonna start
by bleeding the hydro, I'm gonna use my vacuum pump and pull vacuum on the
hydro and all our new lines, and then pull fluid from our
reservoir into all this stuff. Then I'll also need to
bleed the rear calipers. We'll probably need to
foot bleed as well as this, but, just how it goes. No leaks, no leaks so far. All right, listen, this isn't gonna be your standard
brake bleeding procedure. You've got the pedal, like normal, but then you also got another master that you're gonna have to- - Also be bleeding. - Yeah, so you'll just, you'll pump up the brake
pedal and hold it like normal, and then once you're holding that, then you'll just pull the
e-brake all the way and hold it, then I'll bleed, then I'll
tighten, then you'll relax. (claps) (Eddie speaking in foreign language) - All right, pump everything up. Pedal first then handbrake. Pump brake pedal and pull the handbrake. Again. There we go, we got some fluid coming out. Okay. It's in neutral, right? Put down the standard e-brake and give me some hydro. Aye! - It could definitely be stiffer. - Yeah, I still got to
bleed from in there. - [Eddie] There's some (indistinct). - I just wanted to make
sure it was working. All right, we got this sucker bled, now I'm gonna fire it up and see if the old stick does anything. (engine revving) Okay, foot brake. Okay, let's see if the hydro works. Woo! Well, the new hydro works
and that is exciting. I can't wait to take this
thing back out to the desert and use this thing for real. It's gonna make it so much more fun. But unfortunately I don't
have time for that today. In fact, I gotta go get on an airplane. So that's gonna do it for us today, I hope you guys had a good
time watching this video and I hope you learned a thing or two. I'll see you guys next Wednesday for another episode of
Money Pit on the E36, and in the meantime, go follow me on Instagram @zackjobe, and follow Donut @donutmedia. See you guys in a week. (upbeat music)
