What brake fluid are you guys using? I plan on bleeding my brakes soon and wanted to see what most of you are running.

Just the OEM stuff?

 

Should be DOT 3, it'll say on your cap what DOT it is, but 3 sticks in my head. Whatever brand is good, but I'm curious why the need to bleed?

 

The brake fluid is getting dirty and the pedal is getting soft. My friend and I bleed the brakes on his race car all the time and it's so easy I figured just buy a couple of bottles of brake fluid and we'll do it ourselves. Get some pedal feel back and clean fluid in there.

 

Ya, on a race car I see it more, heat and the fact of why not, fresh stuff for every race or so. I've never replaced the fluid in my system and it's been in there since birth in Nov. 99. Most times I've bled the system was during caliper changes, wheel cylinder changes or master cylinder changes, amung a few other things. My fluid has looked and worked the same since new.

I wonder if you're pedals soft because air might be in the system as well or likely the pads need to be changed?

 

It should be DOT 3. You replace brake fluid as it attracts water and dirt and can cause problems with seals and other parts susceptible to corrosion. I ran my 90 F150 to 1998 and 162,000 miles without replacing, but I would not want to look at the parts in the brake system as they were probably pretty bad. I did have to replace front calipers because of problems. Usually I do not keep a vehicle long enough to need replacement of fluid, but if I would I would probably replace at about 80-90k, or about 4 years.

 

The pads still have plenty of life in them. I've already had them both replaced.

 

The valvoline brake fluid and castrol GT LMA are decent Dot3,4 fluids and easily available at the auto parts stores. Next step up would be Ate super blue or Motul but those are Dot 4 and require bleeding after 2 years or so.