Reader review: Textar brake fluid tester

Andrew Carter of Carmend in Surrey compares Textar's brake fluid tester with his old conductivity tester

Reader review: Textar brake fluid tester
Andrew Carter with the Textar brake fluid tester.

Promising to provide a quick and accurate test for contamination in brake fluid, the Textar brake fluid moisture tester has itself been put to the test by GW reader and owner of Carmend in Croydon, Andrew Carter.

An accurate fluid test can offer a supplementary brake servicing business, with the potential to generate an extra £14,700 of annual profit for an average-sized workshop, according to Textar.

If brake fluid absorbs moisture the boiling point is lowered, which can result in vapour lock or complete failure of the brakes.

The process of testing brake fluid is straight forward and exact boiling points can be identified easily using a brake fluid tester.

“Simple to use”

After putting the Textar brake fluid tester to the test, Andrew said: “It’s simple to use and offers a greater degree of accuracy than conductivity testers as it determines the boiling point by heating a sample of fluid rather than guessing the boiling point by translating conductivity into moisture content and then deducing the boiling point from this.

“It’s a far more accurate way to measure a hydraulic fluid’s boiling point

“This sort of tester needs plenty of battery power to heat the fluid, so the Textar unit has to be plugged into the cars battery to work.”

How it works

As the car battery heats the brake fluid, the probe takes the temperature in around 30 seconds before displaying the results on the LCD screen.

Andrew added: “The guideline on the device, and the advice of DoT, states that the minimum ‘wet boiling point’ for dot four fluid is 155C.

“Any lower than this, then it needs changing.”

Vauxhall Astra brake fluid test

“Our old conductivity tester, which we have not used for some time as it fails almost everything, showed the pictured car – a 100,000 mile 2005 Astra – as having greater than four per cent water content and shows two red lights.
“3.7 per cent, the critical per cent set for dot four fluid, leads to a 155C boiling point.
“The Textar tool showed the boiling point to be 200C.
“The boiling point of the fluid in a sealed container with zero water content is 230C, so if ‘bad’ is 155C and ‘fresh out of the bottle’ is 230C then our Astra actually is pretty good at 200C.”

Concluding his review, Andrew told us that he believes the Textar brake fluid tester is “considerably more accurate in its readings”, when compared to his conductivity tester.

Andrew has awarded the Textar brake fluid tester with four out of five stars.

For further information about the Textar brake fluid tester, select ‘more details’ below.

Have your say!

0 0

Lost Password

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.