My 2002 Renault Scenic has on the power steering cap "use DOT 4 brake fluid" so I did, then realised it was not the brake reservoir! Should I be concerned? It was just a small topup. Does it have the wrong cap?
Have a look in manual that came with the car.
Bill
From 17 years ago and 5 previous owners?! Yeah like I know where that is.
You could join these folks, and ask:
Not much point as he is making the stuff up. He makes most of it up.
You are right when you see the source. Old formally known as JW Sword changes his name frequently.
I meant 5.1. I've never heard of anything asking for 5, I guess it was a short lived idea.
You expect me to have a manual for a 17 year old car?
You do it, it's just not important enough to me.
It's popular with the custom and classic car crowd. The other flavors are decent paint removers. Also, it doesn't absorb water which can be helpful if the vehicle isn't driven frequently.
The downside is it does entrain air and can be a bitch to bleed and get a firm pedal. Also, silicone contamination is a painter's nightmare. It doesn't take much contamination to cause fisheyes.
So mostly it was a brainstorm that didn't pan out. One of the selling points is its high boiling point that was supposed to be ideal for racing applications. The fly in that ointment was if any water got into the system it would not mix like it will with DOT 4, and the water would boil at 212. I believe it is completely banned from racing now.
I wonder why the numbering is so wrong? It should have a different number if it's completely different. You'd expect 5 and 5.1 to be the most similar.
The brake fluid numbering makes sense when you realise what they are doing. Each higher number fr DPOT5.1 has a higher boiling point - the most important "mumber" for brake fluid. 5.0 was almost a total bomb
-so 5.1 was brought out as it's replacement - with virtually the same BP spec.
Trying to make sense of any numbering system other than binary code in computers is futile.
It would have made more sense to call it 6. If 5 wasn't rare on the part store shelves, how many people would have screwed up their brake system by buying it instead of 5.1? Even going by boiling point 5 is 260 C and
5.1 is 270 C.For that matter DOT 2 (castor oil) has a higher boiling point than any of them.
Download it.
Bill
Well there's one here:
So apart from DOT 5.0, I can always use a higher DOT number? I assume the car doesn't care if the fluid is capable of a higher temperature. Are there no drawbacks to the higher numbers? Corrosiveness etc?
I don't and I don't have OCD as you would know if you saw the state of my house. I don't obsess about how people spell words either. I still have the owners manual for my 73 Golf and know how to get another copy for free if I need one too.
And have the owners manual for the Getz on the phone where it can't get lost too. Can be handy if the intruder alarm has a brain fart when you close the door on the seatbelt buckle, have the alarm go off and can't remember how to reset the alarm in that situation.
Where do I get that? Renault wouldn't even provide anything but the current model.
I assume the latest power steering fluid is fine. The reason I asked in here in the first place was to see how much harm putting a small amount of brake fluid into the power steering would do. I don't think the manual will tell me that.
But you insist on fancy shelving without any brackets showing.
Do you interchange brake and break? I do find it funny when someone describes an accident and says they were breaking at the time. They most certainly were :-)
Car alarms should be banned, I've never known one serve any useful purpose. They just indicate that the owner made a mistake. I've had trouble with three of mine - the Mondeo one kept sounding for no reason, the AA came out and actually cut the red (!) wire under the steering column to silence it. Both the Golf and the Scenic have had alarms which drain the battery overnight, but I can't stop them doing so, since they hide the alarm deep inside the dashboard to prevent theives from tampering with it.
I've never caused a problem.
I doubt they still even make DOT 3.
No, my cars die of rust usually.
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