Soft Spongy Brakes Cant Stop Brakes Fade Because of Old Brake Fluid

We're never gonna get there. This guy doesn't get the heck out of the way.

Hey, man. What the heck?

I'm sorry.

What are you doing?

Why are you stopping like a maniac?

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today I wanted to talk to you about brake fade. And this is gonna have to do with the hydraulic braking system in your automobile. Now, in most passenger vehicles, you're gonna have hydraulic braking system, which means your brake system functions with fluid pressure partially created by you. Why did I say partially? Well, because, of course, just because you step on that brake pedal and you feel like you're pressing kind of hard, that's not necessarily gonna be enough pressure getting sent down to the brakes to go ahead and stop the car. It needs to have a little bit of assist generally. And, of course, this all starts with you stepping on that brake pedal. After that, the fluid's gonna be pressured all the way down the line to the brakes to help slow down the vehicle, causing friction between the brake rotors and, of course, the brake pads, or depending on if you have shoes and drums in the back. So you know how it breaks work, of course, now we wanna talk about, what is brake fade?

Brake fade essentially, is when you feel either a temporary or complete loss of braking power, especially while you're driving in extreme conditions. Stop, stop, stop. Basically, the friction caused by braking is gonna cause heat repeated, frequent, or sustained breaking to the point your brakes don't have enough time to cool before reaching the brake fluid's boiling point, this will cause the fluid to vaporize and, of course, vapor or gas has a much lower compression rating than fluid. Fluid's a little harder to compress than vapor. Something to think about is the different types of brake fluids are gonna have different boiling points or basically points where they're gonna vaporize due to the heat. Also, older contaminated brake fluid is gonna have a different boiling point, especially if it's been contaminated with moisture. Now, obviously, if you feel like you've lost the ability to stop quickly, this is something that's a major safety issue. You're gonna wanna make sure that you get that diagnosed and fixed ASAP. Do not attempt to drive it this way.

Now, obviously, we're gonna wanna start diagnosing and fixing this issue. The first thing that I would do is get under the hood and come right over to my master cylinder. Looking right at the cover, you can tell exactly what type of fluid to use. Some cars will be DOT 3, could be DOT 4, and even in some specialty cars, you might even see DOT 5. The next thing that I would wanna do is carefully go ahead and open up this master cylinder and take a peek inside. If it looks like it's dirty or has debris or kind of like a little bit of a film or a cream on the top, you know that it's contaminated. Now, a lot of times when you look inside that master cylinder and you're trying to take a peek at the brake fluid, you're probably not really gonna be able to see what's exactly going on.

They are a little clearer, so you can see the level, but to see inside and gauge exactly what's up with that brake fluid, it's gonna be a little hard to do. There are testers that you can get that's gonna be able to analyze that brake fluid for you. Typically, it's gonna go ahead and try to test for acidity inside there and, of course, moisture. Another way that you could possibly test if your brake fluid needs to be changed or flushed is to go ahead and take a peek at your odometer. If it looks like you got 200 and something thousand miles on there and you haven't replaced it in recent memory, well, it's probably overdue. Let's get some more. This is a sample here. Ooh. That fluid's definitely contaminated. This right here is what it's supposed to look like.

So keep in mind, if your brake fluid's old, it's contaminated, or maybe has a little bit of moisture inside of it, it probably is gonna have a lower boiling point than new brake fluid itself. If you did find that your brake system was contaminated with something, the best thing that you could do is just try to do a brake system flush. When you do it, you wanna make sure that you use the proper fluid. Overall, DOT 3 and DOT 4 brake fluid are technically interchangeable and, of course, you could add one to the other, although it doesn't really necessarily make sense because DOT 4 brake fluid is a little bit more expensive and it has a higher temperature rating. If you're just adding it to some DOT 3 fluid, it's really not gonna change anything too much. But if you find yourself driving around in circumstances where you're putting a lot of pressure on your braking system, what I would do is take out all the DOT 3 brake fluid in my braking system and, of course, replace it with DOT 4, which, of course, would have a higher temperature rating, especially in extreme conditions such as maybe you're towing something, going down a hill, or frequently or aggressively braking.

Also, I want you to keep in mind, if for some reason you are replacing the fluid or flushing it out, you wanna make sure that you keep that master cylinder full with fresh fluid. If you let it go down too far and it sucks air into your system, you could potentially have issues, especially if you have an ABS unit in your car. No matter what you do though, definitely don't add DOT 5 brake fluid to a system that's supposed to require DOT 3 or DOT 4. Three and 4, like I said, are interchangeable. DOT 5's a completely different fluid of its own. DOT 3 and DOT 4 are hydroscopic, which essentially means they're gonna be able to absorb moisture, DOT 5 is hydrophobic. It's completely different and essentially hydrophobic means that it's gonna try to repel moisture. The two aren't gonna mix. And if you do mix them well, then you might potentially have a major issue with your braking system overall.

Now, of course, you don't only wanna focus on the brake fluid itself. Is there a possibility that the fluid itself could have down? Maybe you haven't gone very far on the brake fluid, you've only gone 20,000 miles but you find that you have an issue. There's always a possibility that there could be an issue with the caliper or the breaking material itself. If for some reason the caliper isn't functioning properly and it's stuck in the position where it's trying to squeeze the brake pads up against the rotor, you're gonna notice that this isn't really gonna wanna spin very easily. And, of course, if that's the case, that means that the pads are grabbing onto this rotor very tightly. Friction causes heat and, of course, that increases the possibility that the heat of this area right here is gonna suppress the boiling point of the fluid inside the system itself.

When that happens, like I said, once it starts to boil, it's gonna vaporize and the vapor itself isn't gonna compress at the same rate as the fluid itself. With that said, you're also gonna wanna make sure you tear apart your brakes so you inspect the piston on your caliper, make sure it's functioning properly, it presses in easily. And then, of course, you also have the sliders. If either of these slider pins don't function properly and can't slide, that's what could cause the excessive brake friction. Also, you wanna make sure that you inspect your brake flex hoses. You wanna go ahead and give them a wiggle. Make sure that it doesn't look like they're dry, rotted, and cracked in any way. A lot of times what you might also see is a little bubble that starts to form on it. Well, that bubble that I see without any pressure actually gets a lot larger when I go ahead and step on that brake pedal.

Also, when you're inspecting your brakes, you wanna make sure that you inspect your cooling fins on the center of your rotor right here. If you look inside this area and you can see that your cooling fans are rotted and flaking, of course, that's not gonna help with the heat dissipation of the rotor, and your brakes could potentially overheat. Now, of course, if you were the type of person that's involved in this type of extreme driving constantly, maybe you do a lot of stops and go, maybe you like to drive down the highway where you get stuck in traffic every once in a while and you have to do excessive braking, the best thing for me personally would be to go ahead and get myself some drilled and slotted rotors. The reason why that is, of course, all these areas right here is gonna help with the heat dissipation overall.

Okay. So that was a lot of information about something as basic as brake fade. Is it something that's common? No. It's really not that common. Is it something that could potentially happen to your hydraulic braking system? Yes, it is, and that's why I wanted to talk to you about it. I hope you liked the video. I hope you learned a little something. If you did, you wanna talk about it, leave it in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. If you liked the video, go ahead and smash on that Like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.