Brake fluid flush cured my weird pedal feel in 45 minutes

My 2014 Focus had this soft pedal that would sink a bit at stoplights, and I kept blaming the master cylinder. Tried bleeding the corners twice with no luck, so I finally bought a cheap pressure bleeder kit off Amazon for like $60. Did a full fluid flush with fresh DOT 4 and the difference was night and day, pedal got firm almost immediately. Turns out the old fluid was dark brown and probably had water in it from 6 years of neglect. Has anyone else had a phantom brake issue that turned out to be just old fluid? I'm curious if I should flush every 2 years now or if that's overkill.

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piper17524d ago

Had a buddy with a Tacoma who swore his brakes were going out. Pedal felt mushy, sometimes it would drop a little when he was sitting in traffic, and he was ready to drop like 800 bucks on a new master cylinder. I told him to just try a fluid flush first because his truck had almost 90k on the original fluid. He finally did it and the stuff that came out looked like iced tea, super dark and gross. Pedal came back stiff the same day and he felt dumb for almost wasting the money. Fluids soak up water over time so yeah, every 2 years is a solid plan, not overkill at all. Cheap maintenance beats a pricey repair every time.

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