The factory lines would have had a rubber section for flex. If you leave enough extra room an all metal line can be flexible enough to not break from stress caused by body flex.
It is also not hard to add a rubber section. You just cut your metal line in the middle, flare each side without a nut, and add a few inches of rubber hose with some clamps.
So I pulled off the old rubber lines yesterday. The PO had just rough cut the old metal lines where they rotted (on a bend, no less), put some brass bezels over them, pushed on the rubber, double-clamped them with hose clamps, and called it a day. I’m so not impressed.
I picked up some rubber trans line and injector-style clips as ‘Floored recommended. But the more I think about it, the more I think I just want to make new metal lines, as adsm08 has suggested (provided I can get the remainder of the old ones off the trans). I figure that I’ll take a chunk of the old ones down to the parts store, in order to try to match the OD and ID as close as possible. A couple of questions:
1. When I disconnected the rubber lines from the trans oil cooler, I noticed that the bottom of the cooler has typical rubber hose fittings, as seen here:
https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/imperial-maxi-kool-xl-transmission-oil-cooler-243007/12031443-P?searchTerm=transmission+oil+cooler
So I guess that I have no choice but to connect the new metal lines that I’m going to fabricate to the oil cooler with a short piece of rubber hose no matter what? I was kind of hoping to avoid rubber altogether, but I know of no kind of metal-to-metal fitting that would hold on these.
2. When I removed the rubber lines from the oil cooler, fluid ran out of both. Is this sufficient to assume that the cooler is not plugged up, or should I be running further tests before I hook the new lines up to it? It looks to be fairly easy to remove once the grill is out, so I’m not against it if it means protecting the trans.
Thanks!