I'm staying on top of the brake flushes since I bought my 14 LS March of last year. Bought it with 84k, and at 87k I had Lexus change the fluid. That was on 8/18/24. The car now has a little under 94k, but it's been just over a year. I didn't think about it when I just had the oil changed at Toyota. Would it be ok to wait until Feb when it's due for another oil change (by time, not mileage)? Some have said 6 month intervals, some 1 year, others say max 2 years. I bought some of the brake fluid test strips that The Car Care Nut recommends. Just checked it now and it's on the very light pink 10ppm on the scale---basically almost new. Test kit says change at 200ppm or more. Since this is basically the next level above 0, it looks to be ok if I wait until Feb. Yes, I know I can do it myself; but it's not worth the hassle, and I hate dealing with fluids because I always manage to make a mess. The older I get, the less fun working on cars has become.

The whole point of this is prolonging the brake actuator life. Looks like it was done at 60k before I bought it, but since it's still fine, I want to keep it that way.

 

Every 2 years is a safe interval, unless test strips show that more frequent changes are required.

 

If you have brake fluid tester you can figure better schedule for your particular car but general consensus for is once every 2-3 years for the brake fluid and twice a year for the engine oil if you driving less than 10K miles per year. I did my first brake fluid change when my car was 5 years old (30K miles), but my car came from relatively dry area and it was OK.

 

An unconventional but easy and effective method is to change the reservoir volume 1x a year. This will cut water content and any potential contaminant by about 1/2. Just drain or siphon out the reservoir contents, and re-fill.

 

This is a really easy way to replace fluid. Just drive a few hundred or thousand miles then repeat 2-3 times to get the fluid mixed up real good. But it will not do what a real air bleed procedure using techstream would do. I would have the dealership perform this and give them my choice of fluid brand.

 

True, but: if you haven’t done something to introduce air into the system, bleeding isn’t necessary. And if you do this annually, you rarely ever need to bleed except when replacing/rebuilding calipers. It usually takes just a few days to fully mix - it will mix just sitting still because of Brownian motion. But driving will speed it up a lot, of course. Iv’e tested it w/pH strips and it stabilizes (meaning fully mixed) in 2 or so days of driving, or about a week of sitting.

If you start with a new or new-ish car, or rebuilt calipers, you can get away with this for a LONG time. I’m so glad I learned this a long time ago (c.2010) and hope it can help some folks.

Biggest advantage is for people who won’t bleed brakes, or have a lot of cars, they can do this and it helps A LOT. Much better than doing nothing, which is the default for a lot of people.

 

I always purge the lines because old fluid in them will kill things, I also only know what 3 of my cars had as far as maintenance for sure so ALL the others I full flushed.