Brown Hydraulic oil !

[froggy]

Hi, changed my fathers front spheres, on his series 1 Xantia. Horrified to find , while breeding the brakes, the oil coming out is brown in colour and won"t mix with lhm. what can it be? I will need to change it all at some point . I hope its not done any lasting damage ! cheers Terry .

[charentejohn]

Don't worry (I think) as it is just because it is old LHM which loses it's colour. I am guessing this is becase the brakes are a dead end so the fluid just sits there so it is probably original. I read this in another posting but can't find it at the moment.

Hope this puts your mind at rest until someone with direct experience can confirm this.

[Monkeyfeet]

I've had this before when doing brake lines on bx's and xantias that haven't been touched for a while. Once flushed through and topped up I'm certain that there were no further problems. Was the fluid that came out of the spheres a very dull dark green? 'cos that would be quite normal too.

[lexi]

while breeding the brakes,

You could end up with a Hybrid braking system

[Stepto1]

When I flushed my hydraulic system and bled the brakes, the fluid that came out looked like weak tea!

Once the system and filters had been cleaned and new oil added it made a huge difference to the car. Well worth the time and effort.

[froggy]

It looks like strong Tea. thanks for the help guys
Terry

[CitroJim]

It looks like strong Tea. thanks for the help guys
Terry

Mine looked more like beer

Spurred on by this thread I decided to renew Rattiva's LHM today as I knew it was a bit, err, past it's best before date...

This is what it looked like....



The really black bits are from cleaning the exterior of the reservoir and not from inside..

I also found more butchery There was a big lump of filter head plastic broken and missing from the float tube and a missing 'S' clip, the clip that holds the half-round filter in place... The clip and lumps of plastic were swimming around in the bottom of the reservoir.

I replaced the whole head and filters with good spares I had...

That's another one knocked off Rattiva's 'to do' list

[Monkeyfeet]

Wow, black, brown, red, yellow and some almost green. Guinness through to lager. Beer "before" and "after" use

[CitroJim]

Wow, black, brown, red, yellow and some almost green. Guinness through to lager. Beer "before" and "after" use

[DickieG]

LHM appears to go through a series of colour changes in it's life, green to yellow then brown followed by black, you can then work out how overdue for a change it had been