How much can you tweak hydraulic brake lines?

[Racingguy04]

So I just got my revelate designs handle bar sling and seat pack (they're both pretty awesome) and the cables and hoses don't run quite as cleanly as I'd hoped, though it's not too bad. I'm mostly worried about my brakes, they're avid juicy 7 hydraulic brakes and the lines just have some extra bends when the sling mounted, I'm doing my best to mount it without bending them too much straight off the lever/reservoir, but I'm wondering how much extra bends/levering on can these hoses take?

It was easy to tell with my cable operated brakes if there was too much interference because it affected the way the brakes work, but that's not the case with these. Anybody had a brake hose snap? seems like that would be a pretty bad scenario.

[Bndst]

They can take a good bit of bend, but they should't be wrenched around as your bag moves. Avid levers (both Juicy and the newer Taperbore style) are terrible for handlebar bag setups--I've screwed with lever height, bar angle, etc. for hours and haven't come up with a solution other than just going back to my trusty old BB7s.

A friend of mine emailed Scott from Porcelain Rocket when he was having trouble with his Elixirs and custom PR handlebar bag. Scott's response was basically if you can't space the bag out further from your bars or angle your levers high enough to go over the top of the bag...you're pretty much stuck.

A hydraulic line failure in the field would be bad. Real real bad.

[EricB]

I have since switched to XT brakes but I didn't like the amount of bend I was getting on my Avids. The solution I came up with was cutting some stiff plastic, wrapping it around the junction of the cable and the lever and cinching it down with some zip ties. Then strapping the bag on after. Probably overkill but you never know.

[THE LONG RANGER]

I went with the, "Make the cables really, really long" solution.

[Racingguy04]

Thanks for the advice, I think I'll go with reinforcing the cables with some stiff plastic, and if/when I need new brakes I'll probably go with shimano.