Not having the benefit of the list wisdom at the time I converted to silicone
in 1989, I just flushed the system with a couple bottles of rubbing alcohol
(mostly to remove any water present), and charged the system up with silicone.
I didn't change any seals or other components, and I never had any problems,
at least that I could relate to silicone. My brake booster did fill up with
fluid several years later, but all the other brake components on the car are
the ones that were there during the conversion.
No idea why some have problems and some don't. If I had known about potential
problems with seals, I probably would have changed mine as well, as a
precaution.
Steve Byers
HBJ8L/36666
BJ8 Registry
Havelock, NC USA
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark and Kathy
To: healeys@autox.team.net
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 9:05 AM
Subject: Re: Silicone Brk. Fluid
In my findings the consensus has been to replace ALL rubber seals. This is
a decision best done after a complete brake job, including rubber seals.
You can just flush the system and it may work for awhile, but chances are it
will create problems down the road.
My experience was that the silicone tended to cause the rubbers to swell
excessively when I just flushed the old system. The wheel cylinders became
too firm with VERY HARD brake peddle. Only the front disc brakes were
working. So instead of improving my braking it made things much worst.
I have run silicone in many of my cars and have had good results also. I
suggest that you use a well know companies product and change ALL your
rubbers and it should last for a long time. Remember that this stuff costs
twice as much as Dot 4 so one leaky seal is money down the drain.
And as I have mentioned on the list before, silicone will also swell the
seals in an Easy Bleed system over time and makes the seals unusable. I
learned that the hard , expensive way.
MARK
----- Original Message -----
From: "Allen C Miller, Jr." <acmiller@mhcable.com>
To: <healeys@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 4:30 AM
Subject: lubricants
> Thanks for the several replies on this thread
>
> If I should go to the silicone brake fluid, how do you convert from
> conventional fluid to silicone? The reservoir is empty, but I have
regular
> brake fluid in the lines. Can you just displace the DOT3/4 by filling and
> bleeding in the correct order until you've cylced through a certain amount
> of
> new silicone fluid? Or do you have to flush out the lines?
>
> Allen
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