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Brake fade

Crusty old shellback

Crusty old shellback

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So heres the basics.
'21 75th PW.
35" Kenda Kevlar.
Currently have Power Stop extreme tow brake set up. Drilled and slotted rotors. Have been on for about 20K miles.
93K miles on truck.
Brakes have always been tight and great breaking.

So was out on a 1600 mile road trip. Yesterday we drove about 500 miles. Towards then of the drive, we had about60 miles of really tight twisty mountain roads. Temps were about 105.
After about 40 miles, we were over the mountain and on the down hill side. I had been pushing it the whole way and hard on the brakes into the turns and drop offs. Coming down the hill, I got serious brake fade. Pedal almost to the floor. Got slowed down and pulled off the road to let the car behind me go by.
Took it slow the rest of the way down, using the gear selector to slow down instead of mainly brakes.
Stopped in town for the night. Got up today to drive the last 200 miles home. I have brakes, but they are not as tight as before. Seems I have more pedal travel than before to stop the truck. I stopped and picked up some DOT 4 fluid to do a full flush this week. Also going to clean the rotors and maybe scuff up the pads some and repeat them.
Or do I just need to bite the bullet and change pads and rotors.
 
Question is it best to gravity flush/bleed the line to get new brake fluid into the system?

Also, will gravity flush get all the old brake fluid out of the system?
 
Some may know of this road.
Was on 95 north from Vegas. Took the 266 and over to the 168 into Big Pine CA.
Was headed to Bishop for the night.
 
Crusty old shellback said:
So you can see why I got brake fade. I was playing Mario Andretti in a 3 1/2 Ton truck.

Was fun, till it wasn't.
Click to expand...
My buddy was egging me on so I was sending it but got some serious feedback from the backseat.
Was driving a new GMC Terrain, no sports car but compared to a PW it was pretty game and zoomy….brakes did fine, thankfully.
 
Took my 1998 Chevrolet K1500 towing a 12 foot U-haul trailer loaded with household stuff east on Highway 168 back in 2008 heading to Colorado. The 5.0L V8 was in 1st gear (manual) in the single lane section floored. I was hoping nobody would come down. That's a very steep grade to rely on just the brakes.

We live off of a very steep grade and have a concern about the folks stopping to let their brakes cool out on our home's private road entrance. You lucked out. Last year an ACE hardware tractor traiker truck caught fire due to overheated brakes within 50 yards of our entrance. It burned to the ground.

Just did a rear brake job on family's 2014 Ram 2500 last week. The brake caliper pins were dry (no grease) on one set and so only one pad was stopping. The other pad was worn out. That made for poor braking. Both calipers weren't sliding open and close without brake grease.

CA Highway 168...

"This climb averages 5.2%. The steepest quarter mile of this climb is 9.9% and steepest continuous mile is 8%. 1.5 miles of the climb is at or above 10% grade. The gradient on this climb is broken down as follows: 1.2 miles (7.1%) of descent; 6.2 miles (38%) at 0-5% grade; 7.4 miles (45.5%) at 5-10% grade; 1.4 miles (8.7%) at 10-15% grade; 0.1 miles (0.7%) at 15-20% grade"
 
Store only had DIT 3 or 4.

And yea, that single lane tight canyon was cool, but was a little worried about on coming traffic. Luckily in that section, I had 2 cars in front of me.
 
dieselscout80 said:
Interesting because my owners manual for my 2020 says to use DOT 3 brake fluid.
Click to expand...
Okay I just googled it.

DOT 5.1 is compatible with DOT 3 and 4, but not the reverse of that.

5.1 is a glycol based brake fluid just like 3 & 4, but with higher dry and wet boiling temperatures.
 

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I don’t have a 3500 and don’t tow anything of note, so pardon the potential ignorance.

We make a game of seeing how LITTLE braking we do in the mountains, leveraging the gear limiter as much as possible. All the irritated californians and texans can deal with it and wait for a passing lane.

No option like that, or does the towing weight make it impractical? As above we routinely see trucks on fire from overheating their brakes.
 
Photos below of a tractor trailer rig on fire in 50 yards from in front of our home's private road. This was in June 2024 due to brakes overheated. We were in Wyoming at Flaming Gorge. A neighbor sent a text message that my wife's phone somehow received. Due to this incident we drove home and have a portable Starlink for our phone service.

We had visitors from the flatlands of Rapid City and I'm in the back seat of a Ram truck smelling burning brakes in the Rockies. They try to convince that their police interceptor brakes and rotors can handle our home's 21.4 miles continous grade since they drive down the Black Hills using just brakes all the time.
VideoCapture_20250206-204606.jpgVideoCapture_20250205-161657.jpg
 
Brake resivour lid says DOT 3.
I pulled the resivour and cleaned it all out and got as much fluid as I coukd out of the top of the master brake cylinder. Now to bleed each caliper.
 
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