D. Beierl wrote :

SNIP

> The other (and primary) issue is that brake fluid gets *hot* and its
> boiling point is drastically lowered by moisture.  If it boils, i.e. some
> of it vaporizes in the system, strange things could happen such as the
> brakes having a mushy pedal and/or not releasing when you let off the pedal.

Strange things.... yea, I remember one Christmas eve when I went out in my ten years old Volvo with new brakepads and factory stock fluid to get my brother at the ferry from UK, a nice little 380 US mile drive at below zero farenheit temperature . All of a sudden the car started loosing power and finally stopped even thuogh I downshifted and tried to force it to go .
This was christmas eve at 11 o�clock with hardly nobody else out on the road so I felt the panic for a while, just sat there in my car , trying to figure out what to do when I heard the discs "pinging  " when the melting snow hit them and cooled them a bit !
The new pads where dragging just a little which made the water in the brakefluid vaporize and building up pressure in the system = brake the car !
The pads were grinded down enough to let them go free from the disc though so I was able to go on with the driving .
Had to change both fluid and pads, the heat had made them dimond hard and really unefficient :(
Since then I have been thorough with changing fluid on the motorcycles I�ve had - but never again on a car .....
some people never learn ....;-)

Calle
-88 Vanagon
Mullhyttan, Sweden