Dezzy is right - I tried making up a plain hydraulic hose (£60) but it didn't work well - the pump howled constantly as it had no back-pressure and the steering was too light. The factory hose has a special nozzle in the pump union and a nylon liner in the first half of the hose which Mike and I think is some sort of constant pressure / variable flow solution.
There are only two options at the moment:
1, stump up £750 for new factory hoses, for as long as we can get them.
2, find a good used hose set, de-rust it, and re-paint / cover in shrink sleeve which is what I did. Good used ones are getting extremely rare now though.
When Audi run out of new hoses we'll have to come up with a new solution, but I have other things to get on with until then...
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