> Flush with wood alcohol until clear...
Aka "methyl alcohol" or "methanol". It's a bit hard to find, I had to ask
my druggist for it. It's somewhat poisonous, so they keep it behind the
counter so it doesn't get mistaken for rubbing alcohol. Don't use ethyl,
denatured, or rubbing alcohol for flushing brakes. Apparently "methylated
spirits" isn't the right stuff either.
> .........as if you were bleeding
> brakes...........you know.........fill the masters with
> alcohol..........open the
> furthest away, pump till clean and clear, next furthest until
> clear...........etc.
Personally, I wouldn't do this unless I were disassembling all the cylinders
afterwards, to be sure there wasn't any methanol left behind. It has a very
low boiling point, so you want to be absolutely certain it's all out.
> Give me some help here, Randall!!!!
There are competing schools of thought here, one of them is that you should
disassemble everything, flush out the hard lines with methanol followed by
blow drying, and replace all the rubber components. The other extreme is to
just bleed the system dry, then load the MC up with silicone and bleed again
until you get nice clear, purple fluid at all the bleed valves. I've tried
it both ways, and I'm still not sure which to recommend.
The second method is much easier and cheaper of course, but the downside is
that it leaves traces of glycol in the system. That won't hurt anything
directly, but the glycol will continue to absorb moisture and deteriorate,
and of course boil at a lower temperature than the silicone does. It winds
up as a black, tarry substance that is a bit of a mess to clean up if you
ever do take a cylinder apart. (Also sucks all the purple dye out of the DOT
5) But, the silicone seems to surround the glycol, so it still stops the
corrosion; and the glycol is unlikely to come out even if you do have a
leak, so it still protects your paint.
I guess it boils down to personal preference, and how anal you are about
such things <g> I probably won't do the first method again, unless I'm
having the system all apart for another reason.
Randall
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