there is nothing wrong with the dot 5.1 included, except it is a small pot suitable for maybe 2 bleeds. for about £2 more you can buy about 10 times as much from a car parts shop.
you have to keep in mind though that this stuff absorbs air and doesn’t keep well for long periods so if you only plan to bleed your brakes and then put the kit away for a year it doesn’t make any difference
Technicaly it absorbs moiture from the air which is the problem, but as long as you put the lid on it will be fine for years, the ‘wet’ boiling points are arround 4% water, so a litre bottle of DOT would need to absorb a double shot glass of water, which isn’t going to happen with the lid on.
The pot provided of fluid is not sealed, so it could have been on a shelf for two years absorbing moisture and so be abso-lute-ly-****-ing-use-less.
See above, unless they poured water into the bottle first it’ll be sealed enough not to be absorbing significant ammounts of water.
Most car systems (which unlike bikes aren’t designed to be turned upside down) aren’t sealed at the top, the fluid sits in it’s resevoir which usualy has a breether hole to allow the fluid to expand or the level to drop as the pads move. Bikes get arroudn this by having a diaphragm seal under the resevoir cap which allows the fluid level to move without letting air into the fuid when it’s turned upside down. This is why the avid and shimano instructions end with pressurising fluid into the system to push the seal back, if you pulled fluid through from the calliper only it would pull the seal down and leave the resevoir almost empty.
I find my epic avid kit slightly annoying because the fittings that screw into the bleed ports don’t have a larger knurled section for you to grab onto to tighten them
+1, it’s easy enough ont he reverb and the brake calliper, but the lever the port is between the hose exit and the bar so getting pliars to it is harder.