Brake pipes for LHM

[xmexclusive]

Hi All

Bought some brake flexies for a hydraulic Citroen and was surprised to find no green stripe on the pipe.
Took this up with the supplier and was told that the original Citroen pipe branding requirement was green or WHITE.
That grey strip had now been added to the spec for LDS pipes.
So that all three colours could indicate a pipe suitable for a hydraulic Citroen.
That in practice the item to look for on the hose was the marking SAE J1401 which confirms the pipe satisfactory for any mineral based fluid.
Supplier is to recheck this with the two pipe manufacturers he uses.

I took this technical explanation with a pinch of salt and went off to do some checking.
First I looked in the Citroen workshop manual for the XM expecting I could then fire back the"green strip only" exocet.
To my surprise the book says "All rubber components ... are of a special quality for use with LHM fluid and are marked green or white.

White also seems to have been the standard marking colour for normal brake pipes.

Citroen as always give no detailed spec for the hose composition so this makes further checking difficult.
Anyone point me at further documentation to clear this up.
The reference to silver as an additional colour seems to tie in with the recent sphere production.
No experience of C5 brake hoses so advice on the colours used might well add info.

John

[HDI]

Won't be SAE J1401, that is the spec for a hose for NON petroleum based fluids, as it has a an EPDM inner tube which is not resistant to oil. Unless there is an SAE J1401 with amendment for oil based fluids the spec reference will be different.

[xmexclusive]

Hi HDi

Thanks for the reply.
Any references to check your information against.
The reason for asking is that at the same time I also bought a NOS front flexi from GSF.
That has the green strip down one side and a grey stripe down the other.
Lettering on the grey stripe is " Flexitech 70 NBR/CR SAE J 1401

John

[HDI]

Interesting. As far as I know there is no formal SAE J1401 version for oil based fluids. The significant part of that lettering is NBR/CR. That indicates Nitrile rubber inner tube and Chloroprene (neoprene) outer cover. So that definitley indicates a hose intended for oil based fluid. It would seem therefore that SAE J1401 is being used as the base spec for construction regarding pressure, integrity, etc, but with rubber compounds suitable for oil.
SAE J1401 is the industry norm for automotive flexible rubber brake hose and has been for decades so it would make sense to modify it for use on hydraulic Citroens,