What brake fluid are most of you guys using? I want to bleed the brakes.
Nick- I use Castrol LMA (low moisture avidity) because the biggest problem with street use brake fluid is moisture absorption. Different story for track use, where temperature may be an issue. Taz Terry Phillips
Agree, Castrol LMA. Good stuff and reasonably priced. You don't need any of the racing brake fluids if you are not seriously tracking the car. LMA is just fine and holds up well.
No serious track work... Yet... Most likely be tracking the car once or twice this year. Don't really see the need for racing brake fluid.
Racing brake fluid is generally the same, functionally, as regular DOT 3/4 fluid, it just has a higher boiling point. For street use, you will not get the brakes hot enough to worry about boiling the fluid. On the track, brakes can get really hot from repeated hard braking from high speeds. So you want a high temperature fluid that will resist boiling. For the track, I have used ATE Super Blue. It is relatively inexpensive (not much more than regular brake fluid), but has a boiling point over 600*F. Other racing fluids are available, some expensive, some moderately priced, that are up in that range. But if you are tracking the car once or twice a year and you don't expect to be driving it to the limits, even a standard fluid like Castrol LMA will work fine, as long as it is relatively fresh (a good idea to bleed the brakes before each track event).
While i never used Castrol LMA, seems like good stuff for normal use like you plan to do. For the track i used Motul 600 and liked it over the ATE as the pedal had a slightly better feel to me (more ability to finesse the brakes at near lock-up).
I used this stuff last time purely because I wanted to know when I was at the new fluid during my last bleeding, but I used it despite it being 5X more expensive than regular fluid. Luckily brake fluid is cheap so even being 5X more expensive it was only around $25. Where are you buying it at reasonable prices? Or did I just manage to buy it at someplace that screwed me? Having a different color with each change is a great idea, but no one making brake fluid except ATE seems to think so. SAE could make a color chart by year so you could tell by brake fluid color how old it really is. Sort of like license tags.
On the track cars I swap between ATE blue and ATE gold (same stuff, different color) because it makes it easy to tell when you have flushed the system. When my 308 calipers come back I'll be putting ATE blue in because I have it on the shelf. For street use, the Castrol is hard to beat and works great for autocross too. Look for the highest dry boiling point possible. Do not under any circumstances use DOT5.
It is not that expensive around here but I quit using it many years ago because its boiling point is so mediocre.
