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Quick question. How many ounces or milliliters of brake fluid do I need to flush out the old ATE Type 200 with the new Castrol SRF fluid?
I bought the big 1-liter (1000 ml) bottle of brake fluid thinking that would be enough but the shop I'm taking it to for the brake service says I'll need 3-liters/quarts to fully flush the old fluid for the Castrol.
I don't remember needing this much brake fluid in the past and I thought we needed at most was about 24 oz (approx 700 ml or equivalent to two small bottles of Toyota brake fluid).
EDIT: The shop did misquote the amount and meant to say 3 bottles of 500 ml brake fluid for the flush. Still, 1500 ml of brake fluid for the flush still seems excessive, especially when each 1000 ml bottle sells for $65+. Thoughts?
I'm wondering if you could just drain out the brake lines to reduce the amount you waste when flushing. I'm cheap and agree that it would be a bit steep to spend 100 bucks for me to flush my own brakes. Have you put any thought into adding some brakes cooling ducts? I would have to go pull a tire off and look but I bet it wouldn't be be too hard to route the air passage directly to the dust shield
Well, as a contingency plan, I did order a second 1000ml bottle of Castrol SRF as a back up in case there's a justifiably reason that more than 1000ml is required for the flush. If it isn't needed, I'll return the unopened second bottle and everything should be good to go.
I would have to do some research online to see what other track gurus had done on their cars for creating brake cooling ducts but at this time, I'm attributing the primary causes of the boiled brake fluid to be a combination of using old worn DOT4 fluid on the track when I shouldn't have (since last year when I was on the same track with a similar car setup, there were zero issues but the ATE brake fluid was less than a year old) as well as the ATE Type 200 having less of a boiling point threshold compared to other brake fluids such as Motul RBF 600/660 or Castrol SRF. From the recent research I've been doing, a few others have had their brakes fail in a similar manner when using ATE Type 200 for heavy track day use and seemed to have resolved their issues when switching to either Motul or Castrol.
I'll know for certain if brake cooling ducts are required after I test out the IS350 on the same or different track with the Castrol SRF fluid upgrade. If someone else comes up with a solution that's easy to emulate, I'll happily plagiarize that same design for my car.
When logging on this morning, I noticed that this thread hit a certain 100k milestone. I wonder if Club Lexus will send us a digital cake.
Wasn't sure if all of them had them. That said although present, I cant imagine it helps much but who knows without blocking it and testing it.
On another note; any chance of using righty for CAI supply?
I've been looking for an F-Sport splitter to help push up and plan to investigate that as a CAI option.
I found these threads on the IS-F sub-forum which looks to be a similar concept/idea as you had proposed:
Quick question. How many ounces or milliliters of brake fluid do I need to flush out the old ATE Type 200 with the new Castrol SRF fluid?
I bought the big 1-liter (1000 ml) bottle of brake fluid thinking that would be enough but the shop I'm taking it to for the brake service says I'll need 3-liters/quarts to fully flush the old fluid for the Castrol.
The 1000 ml should be enough... I just flushed mine with a motive power bleeder and used 2 500 ml bottles of motul 600 and it was enough. If you have left over brake fluid
it would go to waste if not used in a very short time.
The 1000 ml should be enough... I just flushed mine with a motive power bleeder and used 2 500 ml bottles of motul 600 and it was enough. If you have left over brake fluid
it would go to waste if not used in a very short time.
Thanks for confirming. That's pretty much what my research led me to believe.
If the second 1000 ml bottle of Castrol SRF doesn't have a shelf life of less than two years (while remaining unopened), I may keep it for the next flush two years from now. Otherwise, I'll try to send it back to the vendor after the fluid flush is completed next week.
I just sped through those. I suppose and depending on how deep one wanted to dive into IAT one could get a creative and take the signal wires that trigger access to Nav/phone options when stopped and run a ducted fan motor to spool and push air in to the box.
Alternatively one could add two K-type temperature probes with a delta of say 20°F such that when IAT is >20F ambient spool the motor. For this to work you ALSO need to create and manage an air leak so the air at the box can exit allowing flow.
i.e. stalled air won't offer any cooling so you need a controlled vent at the airbox that opens when the motor runs. Wild tangent but modern RC ducted fan motors take RC aircraft over 100mph but now we are talking brushless motors and speed controllers. As for the flap, a vacuum operated motor and solenoid and walla. Idle time while parked in traffic or at the strip gets you ambient air at the box that isn't heat soaked. Too much work for me but if drag racing, this would be essential!
As for DIY brake bleeding, go to amazoo and grab commercial industrial grade 500ml syringes. Most good for petroleum products and are cheap. Grab 10 feet of silicone tubing with 1/8" ID and use this for sucking the MC dry so you spend way less time pumping the old deluted crap through which saves your expense fluid too!
Use the rest of the tubing at the calipers for bleeding.
Big tip during manual bleeding which I have been doing for years is while the brake system is under pressure from helper holding the pedal down, use soft face mallet or even a chunk of hardwood and tap on the caliper striking upwards. This frees trapped air allowing it to condense into larger bubble and escape at the bleeder. Crack the bleeder and repeat a couple times per caliper. You'll be rewarded with a firm responsive brake pedal.
Just a heads up, IIRC from shopping for brake fluid last year, some of the fluids with higher temperature DRY boiling points have lower WET boiling points. The ATE was (in my opinion at the time) a good compromise between wet/dry boiling point and price. I don't remember SRF specifically, but there is a chance that in humid Florida you will be worse off with old SRF than you were with old ATE.
Just a heads up, IIRC from shopping for brake fluid last year, some of the fluids with higher temperature DRY boiling points have lower WET boiling points. The ATE was (in my opinion at the time) a good compromise between wet/dry boiling point and price. I don't remember SRF specifically, but there is a chance that in humid Florida you will be worse off with old SRF than you were with old ATE.
Thanks for mentioning about the importance of the wet boiling point rating of a high performance brake fluid.
I came across a very useful brake fluid comparison chart of nearly 100 different brake fluids and it looks like the Castrol SRF has a significantly higher wet boiling point rating (518 degree F) over my old ATE Type 200 (388 degree F) which explains why I've read how other users have measured only a 1-2 percent water absorption rate when testing their Castrol brake fluid after 1-2 years of service.
That is an awesome chart! Also, my memory of the SRF sucks! But, that chart does show that many of the fluids that advertise high dry boiling point and put the wet boiling point in the small print are fooling people.
Edit: I suppose if you are running $10k AP Racing brakes along with their fluid on your car you can afford to bleed the brakes after every race or track day, which would mean you don't care about wet boiling point.
I have used the Endless RF650 brake fluid for the last three years with no problems. It is expensive but it works. I have seen rotor temperatures over 1300 degrees F. The brake pads didn't work well but no problem with the fluid. I flush the fluid once each year.
You should be able to bleed the brake with one quart and have left over. You should really do it yourself at home. Easy job with a helper to pump the brakes. Just watch the fluid coming out and go until the fluid color changes. The old fluid will be a dark amber color, the new much lighter.
Thanks for all the great brake fluid flush discussion. I certainly used this knowledge for the recent brake fluid flush.
The old ATE Type 200 brake fluid was finally replaced last weekend with the Castrol SRF and I was certainly happy to confirm that one 1000ml bottle was sufficient for a full flush. The second bottle of Castrol SRF that I purchased as a backup remained unopened and I was able to get a full refund on that ($$$). The pedal feel on a fresh reservoir of brake fluid certainly feels better and more confidence inspiring than driving around on boiled old brake fluid!
I also received a little something in the mailbox the other day. 😁
I haven't had a chance to install them yet nor do I know if I'll be able to sense a difference between these new poly bushings versus the rubber ones already on the F-Sport sway bars but at least these will be a fresh set compared to the hardened old ones.
I finally had a chance to sneak in a few quick revs at a parking garage this morning in order to hear how my current FBO + Tune setup sounds. It definitely has a different exhaust note compared to my old setup with PPE headers, stock midpipes and F-Sport exhaust. Here's the two for comparison (crank up volume for best effect):
04-17-19, 02:47 PM
But, that chart does show that many of the fluids that advertise high dry boiling point and put the wet boiling point in the small print are fooling people.
