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The Carolinas’ Full Throttle Magazine
Spring BRAKE Check Your Pads & Flush Fluid Story and photos by Alan Dockery
I hope y’all did more than just wash and detail your motorcycles. This was a good time for spring maintenance on all your vehicles. Oil changes for everything including the mowers, minibikes, go-carts. Please, take the oil to recycle. Brakes need at least a quick check. Those pads that were OK last time you looked could be close to squalling now. Y’all ride and drive the mountain roads. Half worn brake pads may be fine for puttin’ round town, but they will get hot and fade faster than new pads going down Hwy181. Long before you get to Dead Man’s Curves, you’ll smell hot brakes. One thing I do on all my vehicles in the spring is flush out old brake fluid. Harley-Davidson had a recall a couple years ago because folks weren’t flushing brake fluid and it was turning to jelly in the calipers. Well, think about it for a second. The fluid in the caliper gets repeated compression and heat exposure. Flush your brake fluid on vehicles at a minimum for annual uring the excessive shutdown
brake maintenance. On Facey Space folks ask “dumb mechanical questions” every day. Real basic stuff. I don’t bust on them; they are trying to fix something and don’t know how. Things us old guys learned decades ago can help them. Yes, I know there are a dozen ways to bleed brakes. I was first taught the old method by Daddy and Papa. One guy under the car and turning a little wrench this way and back at the right times. pump - pump – hold - open valve - close valve - pump - pump – hold. keep doing that until the pedal feels good. And there are all kinds of gizmos for “One person brake bleeders.” I don’t remember when, but a long time ago, I started putting aquarium tubing over the bleeder valve and ran it to the ground just to keep the fluid from squirting all over the place. Brake fluid is nasty stuff and will ruin paint plus it’s not cool to get on you. I used to be into street rods, and we kept front suspension parts painted, clean and pretty. Then I began running the tubing into a jar to keep the fluid for proper disposal. Well tell John Boy I said, “Duh Huh!” We have made a one man brake bleeding tool. I’m sure someone sells a kit to do this, but I have used the pickle jar and aquarium tubing one man bleeder for a long time. Some folks just use a long piece of tubing. You can see the bubbles and know
