• Husqvarna Motorcycles Made In Sweden - About 1988 and older

  • Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Mineral oil instead of brake fluid..??

Four Digit

Four Digit

Husqvarna
AA Class
Got an 85 500 xc that I am in the process of restoring. Question: Anyone heard of using mineral oil instead of brake fluid in the front disc brake system?
 
all shimano mountain bike disk brakes run mineral oil instead of brake fluid . and a few others

in what way are you asking ? if there is any benefit ? is it suggested ?
 
Four Digit said:
Got an 85 500 xc that I am in the process of restoring. Question: Anyone heard of using mineral oil instead of brake fluid in the front disc brake system?
Click to expand...

I know your 85 brake system wasn't designed for mineral oil, i'd stick with DOT 3 brake fluid
 
silverstreakNZ said:
all shimano mountain bike disk brakes run mineral oil instead of brake fluid . and a few others

in what way are you asking ? if there is any benefit ? is it suggested ?
Click to expand...

It was suggested by a buddy of mine. I had never heard of using it so I thought I would bounce the concept of this group. If it would work, I guess the only benefit would be that it wouldn't attract water like brake fluid.
 
it does say it on a lot of European equipment, on my Audi I use what they recommend because my wife drives it
American style brake fluid will work fine but remember to totally flush it as compatibility issues are a concern
used to be there was whale oil and when they refined the crude into light oil is when this term was first used, it is from a rock as the term petrochemical is rock chemicals or mineral chemicals, but there are differences in our time and they don't always mix so remember to flush it if you are not sure what was in there before, DOT means department of transportation, they require testing and the results are what you see as the ratings, the different DOT number are a reference to specs such as boiling point and absorption rate etc.
 
Four Digit said:
It was suggested by a buddy of mine. I had never heard of using it so I thought I would bounce the concept of this group. If it would work, I guess the only benefit would be that it wouldn't attract water like brake fluid.
Click to expand...

mineral oil brake fluid is brake fluid and they all attract water at some rate
 
On the newer KTM's (like 2000 +) the Hyd Clutch Systems are either Mineral Oil or Brake Fluid. As in one or the other but not to be mixed up, and don't use the wrong one. If it came with brake Fluid, thats what I would use.
 
ruwfo said:
I know your 85 brake system wasn't designed for mineral oil, i'd stick with DOT 3 brake fluid
Click to expand...
Agreed. Mineral oil will actual deteriorate the plungers and may leave you brake-less at an undesirable moment. Only use Mineral oil in Magura hydraulic lines on the newer bikes. Everything else, use Dot4 or 5.1.
 
Tinken said:
Agreed. Mineral oil will actual deteriorate the plungers and may leave you brake-less at an undesirable moment. Only use Mineral oil in Magura hydraulic lines on the newer bikes. Everything else, use Dot4 or 5.1.
Click to expand...

there is dot 4 and 5 in mineral brake fluid
this was the standard euro thing
 
For brake fluid systems you normally use EPDM sealings. But EPDM doesn't take mineral oil, they will swell. For mineral oil you normally will use NBR sealings. Same story here, brake fluid will make the NBR swell.

So probably you could replace all your sealings with NBR in same dimensions and shore stiffness and be fine. After you've cleaned/flushed rest of system very well of course. Probably good idea replacing hoses as well. Not saying you should, just that it's possible.

Used to work for company making hydraulic gear shift and clutch systems for trucks (Volvo, Scania, MAN, Mercedes etc), some custmoers wanted mineral oil and all we did was replacing seals with NBR.
 
I had a 86 WR400 which had a master cylinder that was bypassing internally, wanted to use the bike, so I replaced the mineral brake fluid with atf (automatic transmission fluid) which is thicker than brake fluid, was supposed to be a temporary repair.

Never did repair the master cylinder, used it like that for years of trail riding and the occasional grass track racing(old time scrambles). I thought I would repair it when it let me down but never did, I just forgot about it, never noticed any difference.

Cheers,
DaveM.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top