Boiled brake fluid

[Tony]

How does one boil brake fluid?

[CarDr]

With heat. I prefer adding 11 herbs and spices to bring out the flavor.

Why do you ask? If you are looking for advice for your personal vehicle repairs, I would not advise looking on a game web site. Even the simple mistake of adding DOT3 fluid to a DOT4 system can cause seals to fail.

With a race vehicle that sees more maintenance, it’s usually caused from a caliper failure or driver error of excessive braking- too much heat buildup.

For an average street vehicle, most commonly old fluid that has absorbed moisture which lowers the boiling point of the fluid. That water will find its way into the calipers where it can quickly turn to steam and cause pedal fade to the point of having no brakes at all. Excessive braking on long downhill grades or a stuck caliper can raise the temps above the normal boiling point too.

[Simon said EAT DUST PLAYER_1 !]

wrong braking technique: soft touch on the brakes for large stretches of time:
this keeps the pads pressed against the rotors meaning the heated up rotors will (over time) transmit more energy back into the brake caliper, thus heating up the fluid more-so than when it is done correctlyD

brake harder with a larger pause in-between brake-applications. This will allow for the air-gap between disc and pads/caliper to form an insulating layer and allows for the rotors to dissipate more heat to air rather than back into the hydraulic part of the braking-system.

Mountainbikers usually come to a stop every couple of hundred vertical meters to let their brakes cool off. When during that stand-still time you forget to release brake-pressure (a noobie-mistake), the fluid is in danger of boiling (introducing air and moisture into the lines) which would result in a moving pressure-point up unto the point where there is no more pressure to feel before the levers are touching the handle-bars.

This is the exact reason why on longer, steep descends in a car, you want to use engine-braking at a slower wheel-speed to lessen the burden on the brakes. The engine's cooling-system is much better suited to take care of a lot of energy over longer stretches of time.

In competition, cars are usually outfitted with friction-material that withstands higher heat for longer but might work less efficiently when cold. This takes care of higher heat at the disk-surface, yet the danger of "cooking" your fluid by using the wrong driving-technique remains. Hence the need for cool-off laps in circuit-driving / -racing.

Some WRC cars were actually using brake-calipers tied into engine's coolant-loop in order to facilitate the more intensive use of the brakes for car-control in some scenarios (e.g. left-foot braking as used in AWD cars).

[Tony]

Originally posted by CarDr:

With heat. I prefer adding 11 herbs and spices to bring out the flavor.

Why do you ask? ...

I was wondering because in almost every Dirt Rally race some AI opponent at the bottom shows "Boiled brake fluid", although it never happened to me.

[Meles Meles]

Originally posted by Tony:

I was wondering because in almost every Dirt Rally race some AI opponent at the bottom shows "Boiled brake fluid", although it never happened to me.

That is funny :D

The most I've ever broken a car (beyond fatal damage and running it off a mountain) is totalling the radiator. Didn't really notice much of a difference in the engine compared to the shot springs and suspension and what not.

[Simon said EAT DUST PLAYER_1 !]

Originally posted by Tony:

Originally posted by CarDr:

With heat. I prefer adding 11 herbs and spices to bring out the flavor.

Why do you ask? ...

I was wondering because in almost every Dirt Rally race some AI opponent at the bottom shows "Boiled brake fluid", although it never happened to me.

makes sense. In DR1 I never experienced even brake-fade unless running in a "no-repair" league. Take it as a story-hint that does not mean much other than "opponent X had technical problems, could not keep pace"