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Beaten to death topic

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Major motor vehicle user, The US Military specifies Dot 5 in all their vehicles. Or did last time I checked which was about 2 1/2 years ago.
 
Also, If you own a chrysler corporation vehicle, DO flush the fluid. Every car manufacturer, except Chrysler, in the world advises replacing the brake fluid every two years or 30K miles. I went around and around with an engineer from Chrysler on why they would not include the recommendation in their manuals, Anywhere. He told me they did it as a cost cutting measure. That their experience shows that the hydraulics won't start causing problems until the vehicle is well out of warranty. Wonder how that song is going to play now that MoPar has gone to the lifetime powertrain warranty, which most other manufacturers include brakes in the warranty package. Gonna have to look it up.
 
Yeah, but Steve Wall wrote that article back in 95..
The silicon ester brake fluid has been out, comes with dire warnings to NOT mix it with any other fluid. So for a new rebuild(cylinders, calipers, lines and hoses. It would be good...

Unless your parts store is into Hi-Performance stuff, they probably don't carry it, but should be able to order it. It ain't cheap.


Castrol SRF.
 
FWIW, TRF usually has DOT 5 for $25/quart (although it looks like it's going up next year to $27/quart). P/N SBF 32.

I was in a Western Auto store the other day, and surprisingly, they also had it (slightly more than TRF, don't recall the exact price).

But Ron is quite right, most places don't carry it. Even the "high performance" shops around here don't seem to carry it (there are better choices for racing, where it's normal to change the fluid after every few races). And when I've asked about it, I just get a blank stare or they try to sell me "synthetic" brake fluid (which ain't the same).
 
TR3driver said:
But Ron is quite right, most places don't carry it.
Click to expand...

You mean DOT5 or silicon ester fluid? I can get DOT5 pretty much anywhere, though the clerk always has to say, "You know this is DOT5, right?". I've never seen silicon ester fluid at any local stores though.
 
Re: Horses, Dead, Beating of

I have recently seen DOT5 in PepBoyz though in pints and if memory serves about the same price/oz as Moss or TRF.

Like Randall, I have just replaced the master cylinder contents with the stuff and bled until I was purple (that is waht is says to do on the bottle). 2 cars and 7 years with silicone and no problems.

I have heard that when pouring DOT5 it is easy to get tiny bubbles that stay suspended for a long time (and compress if they find they're way into the system. So I am careful pouring and try to work with a reservoir that has been sitting full for a long time.

I think Silicone Ester was my prom date in my junior year.
 
jdubois said:
You mean DOT5 or silicon ester fluid?
Click to expand...
Oops, sorry I was unclear. I was talking about DOT 5. Likely Ron wasn't (sorry, Ron).

AFAIK the only "silicon ester" fluid on the market is Castrol SRF, and I've never looked at how hard it is to find in stores. They claim to even have patents on the formula. But it seems to be readily available on-line (33,000 hits in Google, mostly stores offering it for sale). Even Amazon has it listed, for only $75/liter.

And since it doesn't seem to offer any of the advantages of DOT 5, *I* don't plan to pursue the subject. I might, if I were building a race-only car, but since I would rather drive my Triumphs every day (and not have to change the brake fluid periodically) ...
 
jdubois said:
However, mixing the two together in a clean test tube for 24 hours is a far cry from mixing the two in an active, dirty brake system.
Click to expand...
Perhaps this would help ?
 
jdubois said:
You got that rest of that paper?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately I spilled some DOT 5 on the bottom half and it desintigrated! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/jester.gif
 
jdubois said:
You got that rest of that paper?
Click to expand...
Only a rather poor quality scan of it. Too big to post the whole thing here (and I never got around to running it through OCR) ... PM me your email address if you'd like a copy of the scanned images (6 pages, about .5 Mb total).

I've also got scans of another paper presented to the SAE in 1981, describing some "real world" tests done on Alpine mountain grades using two different standard test regimens. Lots of interesting stuff in there ... I particularly enjoyed the comment about they could not demonstrate fluid failure on a 74 Chevy Impala wagon; because the NHTSA test protocol resulted in the "complete destruction of the braking system, including rear tires that exploded from thermal stress". They also found that one of the (uprated) semi-metallic pads had "melted, flowed around the caliper, and welded the pad to the caliper housing" ! (10 pages, about .75 Mb total)

The grades they used in this second paper were total killers : one of them is described as descending almost a mile (8600 feet to 3836 feet) in less than 15 miles traveled, with 17 hairpin turns and grades up to 16%. The run is made in neutral, with continuous dragging of the brakes. The other grade is even shorter and steeper, with "48 hairpin switchbacks, 10 sharp turns and many curves".
 
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