It's been a while, but I've now fitted the new hoses to the 214 (other car jobs and Christmas intervened). I've tried the braided stainless steel hoses. A bit more expensive but there's never going to be any corrosion as the ends are stainless steel including the banjo bolts. I went for the braided hoses made by HEL. These are made near Exeter in quite a high-tech factory, see
https://auto.helperformance.com/. On my car, non-ABS and drum rear brakes, the hoses are HS00493 on the front and HS00737 rear.
Fitting the hoses was pretty straightforward. There are a couple of things which are different. In the standard OEM part, the hose ends have D-shape profile which locates in a D-shaped hole in the chassis bracket. This locates the hose so it isn't twisted and prevents it rotating when you tighten up the brake pipe union. On the HEL product, the hose end is round so even when it's fixed by the circlip to the chassis, it can rotate. So, you need to hold it with a 17mm spanner on the hex while tightening the brake pipe to prevent twisting the hose.
The other thing is the flare on pipe union is different to the standard hose. HEL use their own double-flare seating which claims to make a seal with any flare on the mating brake pipe. Stainless steel is very hard so the brake pipe will deform to fit the hose seating. I didn't seem to have any problem getting a good seal to the existing brake pipes, though you need to tighten it up a bit more as the pipe end adapts. If making new brake pipes, I'd use the DIN balloon flare which seems to seat quite well on the hose fitting without much deformation.
They seem to have come up with a good solution to the support bracket half way along the caliper hose. Here's a photo of that and the complete caliper hose.
I last did any work on this brake system nearly 10 years ago, although I did replace the front discs and pads about 5 years ago and cleaned out the rear brake drums. I soon discovered this had some consequences.
The first snag: one of the caliper bleed screws was completely seized. Couldn't budge it with anything including a powerful mole-grip. Had to take the caliper off the car and use a vice. I anticipated there might be problems and bought new bleed screws (LR015523 on the front and SMG10001 on the back). The rear wheel cylinders were the same, the bleed screws completely seized. I'm going to have to remove those, probably fit new ones. They do seem to be available, the OEM part numbers are EJP1489 (O/S) and EJP1488 (N/S). I could only bleed the new rear hoses as far as the wheel cylinder. The cylinder was still full of fluid and the brake pipe dripping brake fluid so I don't think there is much air in there at all.
I did notice as we bled the brakes that the old fluid coming through had bits in suspension in it, so I got my wife to keep pumping the brake until it had cleared. The brake fluid was well past its best. I think it's best to replace brake fluid every three or four years. What do others think? If I'd done that rather than leaving it nearly 10 years, the bleed screws probably wouldn't be seized either.
One positive, when I last replaced the brake pipes and hoses in 2015, I used copper brake pipes and brass ferrules. This turned out to be great, everything came apart very easily with no damage to brake pipes, which you often get with steel ferrules which rust and stick to the pipe.
