I asked a familiar auto mechanic how to find out when it was time to change the brake fluid, he showed a simple way

Last week I brought my "old woman" to the service station to my friend Vasily Ivanovich to change the oil in the engine (since the last replacement the car has covered a little more than 10 thousand kilometers).

Taking this opportunity, I at the same time decided to ask him how to know when it is time to change the brake fluid. I bought this car last year and I don’t know what condition the brake fluid is in and how long the previous owner changed it. As you know, brake fluid has one property, it absorbs moisture from the air (hygroscopicity). And an excessive amount of moisture can lead not only to corrosion of some parts of the brake system, but also to complete failure of the brakes, which entails the most sad consequences.

In general, as far as I know, according to the manual, this consumable is advised to be changed every 2 years and pedantic Europeans do just that, but ours people often do not follow these recommendations and I have repeatedly heard that the brake fluid should be changed after 6 years of operation or 90 thousand rpm. km of run, but this is somewhat doubtful, because the shelf life of the brake fluid itself is no more than 5 years.

To my reflections, an experienced auto mechanic Vasily Ivanovich said the following: "In principle, the Europeans do everything right, but still, to find out exactly when you need to change the brake fluid, you just need to measure the amount of moisture that it contains. This can be done in a very simple way, even without a special tester.. I will show you now".

To do this, we need the most common multimeter that almost every man in the house has.

We expose it to a constant voltage of 20 V.

Then we unscrew the lid of the brake fluid reservoir and set it aside.

Now we take the plus probe and put it on the plus of the battery.

And we dip the minus probe into the tank with the brake fluid, and see what voltage the multimeter produces.

As you can see, in my case, the multimeter showed 6.3 V. What does this mean? And this suggests that it is definitely time for me to replace the brake fluid.

Here Vasily Ivanovich made an explanation: "If the multimeter gives a value higher than 3 V, then the brake fluid has lost its properties and must be replaced.. This is due precisely to its hygroscopicity. The higher the value given by the multimeter, the more moisture the brake fluid has absorbed and the more current it conducts. "