Talk:Brake fluid

Yunnan
The road sign in Yunnan is a bad example. There are two terms for brake fluid, 制动液 being the formal one, 刹车油 is informal but common. So the 刹车水 on that sign is most likely used literally -- meaning the cooling water for the brakes on heavy trucks. Truck drivers who work on mountain roads often install (commercial or improvised) water cooling device to prevent brake overheating. It consists of a water tank, a valve, and hoses dripping water onto the brakes. This also makes better sense because you don't lose brake fluid during a long descent but you may need a lot of cooling water for that 38km! 112.95.200.77 (talk) 05:33, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

USDoT and DOT
The article makes no sense, why would the USDoT be the body that standarised brake fluid world wide? Its not reference or explained which leads me to believe its not true.(Morcus (talk) 13:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC))


 * the US DOT standards have widely been adopted worldwide because the USA was the first country with lots of cars. They already had standards in place and other countries followed.   Anywhere you go in the world, automobiles use DOT brake fluid.

Service and Maintenance
The Service and Maintenance section states "As a general rule, brake fluids with different DOT ratings should not be mixed, although all DOT fluid is compatible, (this is part of the DOT specification)." I do not see where all DOT fluid is compatible in the DOT spec (reference found on the DOT 5 wiki page). The DOT 5 wiki page referenced in this article states "Using DOT 5 in a DOT 3 or DOT 4 system without proper flushing will cause damage to the seals and cause brake failure." If the information in this article is innaccurate, it could be quite dangerous. Terryjft (talk) 02:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * If you had read the entire article you'd see that you've misunderstood that. DOT 5 is NOT compatible with other fluids.  Dot 3, 4, and 5.1 fluids can mix without an issue.    Since the dry boiling point on DOT 3 is higher than the wet boiling point on dot 5.1, you could theoretically use DOT 3 fluid temporarily on a DOT 5.1 spec system without a problem.  They're all glycol based and have no issues mixing.  I can't link you to the stuff but I've been a mechanic for 20 years.


 * The "Service and maintenance" section needs to be rewritten or removed. It appears to have been written by someone with limited experience and the content isn't relevant to the article.

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Proposed merger
There are separate articles for DOT 3, DOT 4, DOT 5, and DOT 5.1 - did I miss any? These are largely copies of eachother with small changes, and duplicate information already in this article. They should all be merged here, which would mean little more than converting them to redirects. Lithopsian (talk) 19:47, 25 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Support: They are essentially the same paragraph and the same table. Merge them all back to the parent article.  Stepho  talk 23:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Support Andy Dingley (talk) 23:19, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support convert them to redirects. Created DOT 2 in mean-time. Widefox ; talk 07:39, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Merged. Feel free to work on it, or re-add any little snippets I might have missed. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:23, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

We are a company that would like to manufacture DOT3/DOT4 brake fluid. Can we help with chemical structures and ratios?
We are a company that would like to manufacture DOT3/DOT4 brake fluid. Can we help with chemical structures and ratios? 2A01:9700:1AD0:8600:B4EA:39D8:5C1E:B723 (talk) 15:50, 16 November 2023 (UTC)