Re: 78 spider fluids and diff. hex

[Richard Welty <rwelty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:42 PM 8/20/98 +0000, Lawrence  Leong wrote:
>Our esteemed listmaster wrote:
>
>>Castrol LMA is readily available and effective. the ATE fluid in the blue
>>cans is also quite good, but slightly harder to find.

>Hmm.  Which ATE, the dark or light can?  Castrol LMA is hard to find here
>(or it's labelled differently).  ATE has both products, both are good, but
>my untrained feet can't tell the difference.  Light blue is more 
>expensive....

what i've used was in a light blue can; i've never seen the other product.

the key issues in assessing brake fluids are the wet and dry boiling points
(subject to the caveat that silicone based fluids have other issues, and
are not recommended for performance applications.)

fresh fluid will boil at the dry boiling point; old fluid which has
adsorbed significant amounts of water will boil at the wet boiling point,
which is much lower. the fluid that is generally at risk of boiling is that
which is in the calipers, as that is the location in the braking system
that gets the most heat.

the ATE and Castrol fluids have very good dry boiling points; this is the
reason for recommending. they also have tolerable wet boiling points.
people who do lots of track events should probably change the fluid a lot
to keep fresh stuff that boils at or near the dry point in the calipers.
people who do one track event a year (for example) should probably
completely change out the fluid just before the track event.

richard

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