Monday, March 17, 2008

Brake fluid screwup

I've been having issues with my Juicy 7s for the past few months. Just mushy lever feeling regardless of how many times I bleed it. Poor stopping performance. No doubt my bleed technique has much to be desired, but I think my brake fluid choice was bad.

I went with some DOT 5 silicone from the autoparts store and have realized this is a bad thing. Juicy's take DOT 4 or DOT 5.1

DOT 3, DOT 4 and DOT 5.1 are glycol based and the higher end ones are synthetic. They all mix ok, but DOT 5 is silicone based and does not mix well with the others and it is not recommended for Juicys.

I am not sure yet if I've totally hosed my internal seals, but I haven't been leaking any fluid. I'm going to flush the system with Valvoline High Synthetic DOT 3/4

a couple of times and see if that helps out. But am prepared to overhaul the calipers which really isn't all that hard, provided I can get the bolts off. Last time I had to dremel a slot in one and almost had to drill it out.

Really I want to try out some Forumla Brakes, the one thing I'm concerned about though is how much adjustment there is for pad contact with the Formulas. My hands are very small, and I have to have my lever contact very close to the bars otherwise my hands ache a lot. Juicys have been wonderful in that regard.

1 Comments:

At 8:00 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Far to many dot's to worry about. I'll keep it in mind though for future reference. Always good having others making the mistakes for you

 

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