New brake line for 550 - what length? Any recs?

Hi All!

Hope your riding season is going well. Haven't been on for a while. Life with the 550 has been good so far and I've been elbows deep in working on a Honda CL 350 for a friend...

However, my front caliper is leaking on the 550 and needs to be rebuilt. I was going to replace the brake line too since it's original. It's an 82 550 LTD with superbike bars. I got a newer chinese MC that leaves something to be desired, but it works... I'm at work and want to order the parts soon, but I forgot to measure the line length. Can anyone give me a reccomendation of what size I'd need?

Thanks!

Ok, now I see what you're asking (re:PM). I'll see if I can find an LTD line to measure, if it's not too late.

The factory line appears to be about 40 inches from banjo to banjo. The line makes a bend at the lower triple clamp. So with routing it more directly and the lower bars, I would think you could take a few inches off, but really, you probably want to wait and measure when you get home since they are not likely going to be returnable.

According to the diagrams, the stock brake line is 1050 mm -->> ~41.25".
With superbike bars, you can probably go 5-6" shorter or thereabouts.
The best thing to do would be to disconnect the brake line at the mc, then figure out how much overage there is.

The single brake line for my 81 650-CSR is listed as being 1090 mm which is approximately 1.5" longer than yours. I installed Euro bars & can go about 7" shorter on the brake line, so I'd guess 5-6" shorter would work for you, but that is just a guess, since I"m assuming your Ltd bars are very similar to the CSR's.