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Old 10-05-2019, 03:57 PM   #1
FC
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You can’t trust other people’s work

I’m coming up on 3 years with the Miata, so I decided to take care of a few things:

- oil change and filter (yearly)
- spark plugs (no record of them having been done)
- preemptive replacement of coolant expansion tank (they dry and fail catastrophically at around 10 years/100k apparently)
- brake fluid flush
- air filter

A few other items the previous owner had done at a mechanic and I have the receipt. I will re-do those next year.

The previous owner was an Autox guy so I figured he must have taken good care of the car. Indeed he had the receipt for the big 60k mile service.

I also could see he had ATE Blue brake fluid on the reservoir, but I have no record of when he did that, so it has probably been at least 4 years. I got new fluid and started to drain from the calipers and to my shock, the fluid coming out was not blue as in the reservoir, but rather nasty orange/yellow fluid. It took a decent amount of flushing to get to greenish stuff and eventually the new stuff I added.

Did this guy just top off the reservoir with ATE blue? WTF? It seems the brakes were not properly flushed.

Anyhow, I the flushed the heck out of the brake lines and the brakes feel much better, though they were never bad.

Also he had put in a K&N filter (not a fan and consensus is also not to use it on NC’s) and it was nasty. I’m sure it’s placebo, but with the OEM filter car seems to run better.

My work was interrupted, but I’ll do the plugs tonight.

Last edited by FC; 10-06-2019 at 02:13 AM.
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Old 10-05-2019, 08:41 PM   #2
John V
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ATE blue is just the worst
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Old 10-06-2019, 02:16 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John V View Post
ATE blue is just the worst
I never felt the need to try it, but based on what I read on forums many years ago, I thought it was supposed to be good.

I stick to OEM fluids or the well-regarded Castrol stuff.
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Old 10-06-2019, 08:24 PM   #4
John V
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It's fine, nothing special about the specs, but it dyes everything blue (like the reservoir). Reeeeeally annoying.
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Old 10-06-2019, 10:07 PM   #5
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It's fine, nothing special about the specs, but it dyes everything blue (like the reservoir). Reeeeeally annoying.
Yes, the blue reservoir sucks.
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Old 10-07-2019, 09:41 AM   #6
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I’d guess that they cracked the calipers and topped off with blue.

The good news is that forever more, you will get green fluid out.
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Old 10-07-2019, 10:30 AM   #7
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I’d guess that they cracked the calipers and topped off with blue.

The good news is that forever more, you will get green fluid out.
Seems like it. I flushed a ton of fluid out, and the best I could get was a bright, light green hue. But it looked completely clear coming out of the hose. It only looked green on the container.
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