When To Refill Or Change Car Brake Fluid

When it comes to maintaining a car, most of us do a considerably good job by timely changing oil and air filters, and topping-up the essential fluids like brake fluid and transmission fluid. But have you ever done the same for your brake fluid? Most people don’t. In other words, despite being one of the most important fluids from the safety point of view, the brake fluids are perhaps the most neglected fluid in your car. Below are some basic information regarding the functioning of brake fluid along with reasons of its contamination.
Reason of Increasing Moisture Content: - Every time you open the master cylinder for checking the level of brake fluid, it tends to capture the moisture from the air. The high the moister content in brake fluid, the lesser its efficiency. As per the auto engineering experts, cars only one year old can have brake fluid with moisture contamination of two percent and even higher.
Affects of Increased Moisture Content: - Generally, under extreme brake uses the essential brake components including rotors, pads, drums, and shoes tend to reach the high temperatures of over 400 to 500 degree. The DOT 3 brake fluid will begin to boil when it crosses a temperature of 400 degrees. But if the moisture content in your brake fluid has been increased to up to 3 percent, its boiling temperature reduces by up to 25 percent. The basic reason behind this is that when brake fluid gets exposed to the high temperatures, the moisture content present in fluid starts turning into stream and remains as an incompressible part of fluid. This in turn reduces stopping ability of the braking system.
Harms to the Braking Efficiency: – As mentioned above, the contaminated brake fluid harms the efficiency of the overall braking system. Moreover, the excess of moisture can cause corrosion to the internal metal parts such as calipers, brake lines, wheel cylinders and pressure valves.
Experts Recommend: – According to auto engineering experts, the car brake fluid should be changed after every 40,000 km or 2 years (whichever occur earlier).

 source:http://www.carzy.co.in/blog/car-maintenance-tips/