>From mercury.lcs.mit.edu!tr8-request Mon Jun 6 13:02:25 1994
>
Jim Tencate wrote in the TR-8 email list:
>Well, this weekend I was under the car and decided to have a look at the
>slave cylinder. You may recall that I rebuilt the slave some 6 years
>ago now and used DOT5 instead of the usual DOT4 brake fluid. I'm pleased
>to report that the only bad thing that has happened down there is the rubber
>boot on the end of the slave (it lives inside the bell housing). It's
>getting old and starting to disintegrate. Everything else looks GREAT!
>It was also really nice not to have to worry about getting brake fluid
>on the paint :-)
The following is about my TR-250, but the comment is generic to all
Brit cars:
I just bought a new master cylinder from Moss (the box was labeled
Beck/Arnley) and the brake fluid reservoir cover states to use
only DOT 3. Now that flies in the face of most conventional
wisdom that says british car hydraulics need DOT 4 (LMA, Girling,
etc.) In any case, I opted for the DOT 5 too. I had that in
the system before with no problem.
Just thought I'd mention it. I think the historic legend of DOT 3
fluids destroying rubber hydraulics is, at least today, somewhat
invalid, if not wholly without merit. Anyone have any contemporary
horror stories to counter that perception.
What may have been the perceived problem in the past was, in
my opinion, more a case of a failing component (one that was
leaking slowly) which lead to the addition of brake fluid
(i.e. someone just popped in DOT 3 because the level in the
master cylinder had gone down). Given the component failure
wasn't going to improve, the ultimate replacement then being required
a short time later was probably viewed as being caused by using
the DOT 3 instead of the Girling/LMA (DOT 4).
By the way, I bought the master cylinder from Moss because it was
on backorder at TRF and I needed one immediately (my 250 is my
daily driver). On the other hand, when I stopped in at the
Moss east coast distributer about a week ago to buy a pair of
U-joints, Moss was out-of-stock (being out-of-stock on TR U-joints
is unpardonable as they can be had from most any auto parts house
if you do some cross referencing).
Just my thoughts,
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Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.)
Morristown, NJ email via UUCP bcr!cc!whs70
201-829-2879 Weekdays email via Internet whs70@cc.bellcore.com
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