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Re: Brake fluid damage to paint

To: vintage-race@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Brake fluid damage to paint
From: Bob Lang <LANG@ISIS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 09:29:15 -0500 (EST)
Hi,

I'm not a chemist, but here's my experince.

I believe brake fluid is made up from Glycerin and alcohol. Maybe there's 
other stuff in there. It will clean up readily with soap and water, 
although you may need more soap than water.

You most certainly don't want to spray brake cleaner on the spill. Brake 
cleaner is by definition a solvent, and that'll probably wreck your paint 
even more.

Of course, you didn't say what kind of paint you have, my experience has 
been with acrylic enamel paints. If you have epoxy paint, then ignore 
this whole message, I'ver spilled nitro-methane fuel on that and it 
didn't bother the paint at all!

Also, you don't want to use a lot of pressure when removing the results 
of the spill. The brake fluid more or less softens the paint. High 
pressure anything will take your paint off.

If you wipe up the spill immediately after it occurs, you should be in 
pretty good shape. If you don't get it all, there will be some 
discoloration on the paint. For instance, my car is red: one drop of 
brake fluid on a fender caused a little area to turn purple. The fluid 
was wiped off, and the paint remains on the surface of the fender, albeit 
with a little purple area.

If you let it sit too long, the apint will soften to the point of falling 
off. Look under my brake mater cylinder for evidence of that ! ;-).

good luck!
rml
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