Got myself in a bit of a bit of a pickle and dropped my brake fluid by accident. Some beer and a late night were involved.

I’m off on a ride today so no time to pick up dot 5.1 or the like so I’ve used the rock shox fluid that I had spare in the shed.

Am I going to die?

Your brakes will work for abit. And will possibly fail with all the rubber components swollen or falling to bits depending what the suspension oil is. Or everything will be fine.

This has the potential to go very very wrong.

Many moons ago, I worked in a bike shop and a chap came in with a set of Hayes brakes that another shop had bled with magura oil.

Basically, unless you can get all the non metal parts and do the work yourself, you may as well put them in the bin (assuming the alternative used was a mineral oil base – but it’s not going to be glycol based is it).

Might be okay if you bleed it again with DOT fluid ASAP…

It’s not like brakes are important, do you live near anything steep?

Yes, the seals will fail and you will die screaming and in flames.

In all seriousness, you’ve probably knackered the brakes. I would ditch the ride and visit your lbs pronto for some proper brake fluid then do a full bleed

Dot5.1 is pretty readily available. Halfords, or even some petrol stations. I’d at least flush them through with proper stuff. Might avoid going too quick on big hills too until I was confident they weren’t knackered

Exactly which brakes and exactly which rockshox fluid?

Mineral oil based fluids can destroy seals in DOT 4/DOT 5.1 systems. In an emergency, you can use fresh water to replace DOT fluids. It will work fine and won’t harm the system, but will boil easily so it’s only suitable as an emergency to get you home. After that, you need to completely flush the system to get all the water out.

If you’ve filled a DOT system with mineral oil, you should strip it completely and wash everything in hot soapy water, then rinse in hot water and allow to dry before reassembling. If you’re lucky, it might be fine. If you’re unlucky, you may need to replace all the seals.

This is turning out to be my worst bodge ever by the sounds of it.

No WT on the bottle but says for use on reverb and suspension.

The only saving grace is its my 10 year old run around with elixir brakes so probably needing replaced/upgrade.

I’ll get some dot and bleed it through a few times, then keep an eye on it.

Reverb oil is mineral based, definitely not compatible!

In an emergency, you can use fresh water to replace DOT fluids. It will work fine and won’t harm the system

You mean mineral right…… We used to bleed magura hs33 with water way back when for trials

trail_rat, out of interest, why?

bigyinn – Member
trail_rat, out of interest, why?

Because it boils at a higher temperature?*

*not actually true but surprisingly close

Have you considered using Bisto?

I hear that’s only for use in forks though Rob?

Water mainly because it’s cheaper.

It’s also less viscous and supposedly made it a bit more responsive/instantaneous /non compressible

Because it was trials they never got cooked 🙂