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I’m not an expert, but wouldn’t you just bleed the brakes in that instance? How much did he get in there, and how many times have you had it running/driven since this happened? If you haven’t actually ran it since he did this and its just sitting in the reservoir you might be lucky and just have to pump it out manually. But one thing is that you don’t want the inconsistency of the fluids to remain (in actually driving it) for very long since its a hydraulic pressure system.
if you havent driven it at all, or stepped on the pedal, use a turkey baster and suck the res dry and replace with brake fluid. if you have, crack open the bleeder screws and flush the system. eric has a video where he did this to the subie somewhere.
A++ on the above. As suggested using a turkey baster to suck
out the master reservoir.this video should get you the rest of
the way. 😉Those vids and suggestions are great for flushing out a system. But the problem is you have contaminated a hygroscopic fluid with petroleum and that is VERY bad. Every rubber component in that system is contaminated and will fail. It may not happen today, but you’ll come off a freeway off ramp in a month or a week and the pedal will drop. The bad news is that the only way to fix that is to replace everything with rubber seals in it, which happens to be everything in the brake system.
If you haven’t touched the brake pedal, get that master cylinder off and replace it. If its been driven, I’m the bearer of bad news and your brother did some expensive damage. The master, calipers, wheel cylinders (if you have a rear drum setup), rubber flex hoses and possibly the ABS unit if equipped are now compromised and must go. The steel lines must be thoroughly flushed with brakleen and compressed air.
I would get your brother watching some of Eric’s videos so he learns a thing or two. If he hadn’t told you what he did he could’ve gotten someone killed. Going is optional, stopping isn’t. Bring him to the knowledge he needs to cure his ignorance.
:ohmy: OMG OUT LOUD! This thing happened to a friend of mine in the early 80’s! He thought the trans fluid was interchangeable with brake fluid…. instead of power steering fluid. Brought his pinto to me and said the brakes don’t work too good. We tried to bleed them with no success…. ended up cutting off the rear brake lines and crimping them, as the front brakes were not affected. LOL! The brakes were like nothing was getting through. Had to really stomp on the pedal to get any brake action! Luckily the front brakes were good. Had no money so couldn’t get them fixed proper. :dry:
Please please please don’t do that with your car. I hate hearing about people doing that. Its always an excuse about not having the money. I get it, I’m not anywhere near rich either. But if you don’t have the money to keep your steering, suspension and brakes up to par your vehicle has no business being on the road unless its being towed to a shop. No ifs, ands or buts, no exceptions whatsoever. If you can’t afford to fix a slipping transmission, fine. But you had better be able to safely steer to the shoulder and stop the car when it blows. Every single one of us has to share the same road. Nobody has any right to choose to put people’s lives in jeopardy because they don’t want to spend the money to make their car safe. Like I said in my last post, going is optional stopping isn’t! What are you going to tell some kid’s parents when you run over their little kid and put him in a grave? Going to tell them that a couple hundred bucks in brake parts was too expensive so their kid gets to have an expensive funeral? If you can’t keep your car safe then get some shoes, get a bicycle, get a bus pass, call a friend I really don’t give a shit. Once you enter the road with a car you know is unsafe you have become a public menace. By the way, should you happen to kill someone with your car because of the unsafe brakes and the cops look into it you can go to prison for manslaughter the same as if you hit them drunk. The legal culpability is the same.
Before anyone accuses me of preaching or thinks it can’t happen to them, I had to bury my best friend from back to the first day of 7th grade two weeks before he turned 19 because someone else had a pity party about money and drove around on brakes they knew were garbage. Killed my friend, his girlfriend and permanently maimed the 20 year old that were in the truck. The guy that hit them had pinched off his leaking rear line and pumped the brakes to get to a stop sign. He got to see what prison was like.
I make no exception to this rule. Brakes must be good or the car doesn’t enter the road. I don’t care about money problems one bit when it comes down to this. This is why so many states require yearly safety checks before you can renew plates. It forces the unsafe cars to be parked or fixed correctly. It doesn’t descriminate against race or income. If your POS rusty Tempo is mechanically safe, you pass. Got a 2 year old Mercedes with smoked brakes and bad tires? You fail.
Thank you for all the valuable advice.
Well this news came to me when I came home from work, so the car’s been driven.
Seems this is gonna hurt my pocket pretty bad. 🙁unfortunately, yes it will. but safety is paramount. when i first started wrenching on my own shit i was always timid around the brakes, i figured if i screwed up on anything else i just wouldnt be able to go, screwing up on the brakes means you dont stop.
you can consider getting junk yard parts, it might save you some cash. especially on the master cylinder.
You might be able to use junkyard parts, but depending on what you drive the price of reman stuff can be pretty cheap. One thing I’ve found with used masters is a tendency to break during bleeding. Think of how one works. A piston sits in a bore and moves with the pedal, pushing fluid. The piston is sealed by a few rubber o-rings. Look at used brake fluid, it gets dark from contamination in the air, dirt and dust particles. In the bore they tend to collect towards the far bottom end of travel where you never hit them with the seals as your system is sealed up and the pedal can’t fully reach the floor. But when you bleed it the pedal does reach bottom. One stroke to the floor can be all she wrote. The rubber rings hit the dirt and tear, resulting in a bad master. But to properly bench bleed it you would have to bottom it out. I’ve had a lot of older vehicles blow the master when bleeding it and the whole reason it came in to me in the first place was a rusted brake line. You might get away with it, I certainly hope so, but realized that it can happen. I’d check around on the price of some good rebuilt stuff and hope for the best.
If the steel lines are pretty rusty this would be a good time to just throw them out and build new ones. Everything else on the car is getting changed anyway.
I’ve had this show up at the shop before and it didn’t end well. I ended up having to replace every part on the brake system and flushing out all the lines. The main reason is that the petroleum in the transmission fluid will eat the rubber components in the calipers, wheel cylinders, and master cylinder and cause them to fail. You can ‘turkey baster’ the fluid out of the master but keep a close eye on the rest of the system as there may be problems down the road. To be honest this is a very tough call. Good luck and keep us posted.
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