absent.canadian

I love water bottles.

Not the cheap flimsy plastic bottles that come in 6 packs at the grocery store, but the really nice ones made by Nalgene, Sigg and the like.

In fact, water bottles are bit like pocket knives to me.  For no rational reason, I find myself buying a new one every four to six months simply because I get bored of the old one.  I recently “retired” my red 1 litre Nalgene bottle for an enormous fire-engine-red 1.5 litre Sigg bottle that has been affectionately dubbed the “fire extinguisher” at work.

And why is this?  Deep inside, there can be found an ounce of logic.

You see, I gave up drinking coffee about 4 years ago.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to understanding how an alcoholic must feel when he hears the cap twist off of a frosty-cold beer, or the pull a former smoker feels when the click-snap sound of a lighter is within earshot.  I allow myself about one cup of coffee every month as a “treat” – enough to savor the taste, but not enough to form another addiction.

I also gave up pop (soda).  This was a little easier than coffee, and I don’t miss it at all.

Next on the hit list was iced-tea (affectionaly referred to as “sweet-tea” in the South).  This was another hard one, and I allow myself about two glasses per month.  (And unlike most northerners, I always drink sweetened iced tea.  Unsweetened is suitable only for cleaning drains and dumping in refuse piles.)

And this year, I’ve tried to give up sweetened fruit drinks.

What does this mean?  About the only things left for me to drink are milk and water.  And the presence of a water cooler at work means that I have an endless supply of cold, delicious water.

And what better way to encourage water consumption than a beautifully engineered water bottle to carry it in?

So the logic isn’t perfect … but I enjoy my water bottles nonetheless.

On the top of my Ducati’s front brake master cylinder are the following words:

“Use only DOT 3 ÷ 5 Brake Fluid”

And as the following post will demonstrate, this does NOT mean DOT 3 or DOT 5.

First, a brake fluid primer.   There are three commonly available brake fluids: DOT 3, DOT 4 and DOT 5.  One would presume that the higher number means that it’s “better” vluid, but this is not necessarily so.  DOT 4 does have a higher boiling point than DOT 3, and most mechanics will not hesitate to substitute DOT 4 for DOT 3.  The two also mix just fine, so there’s no problem topping up a DOT 3 system with DOT 4 fluid.

DOT 5 is where things get complicated. DOT 5 is silicon based.  It is not hygroscopic.  It does not mix with DOT 3 or DOT 4.  In fact, mixing DOT 5 in a brake system that is currently filled with DOT 3 or DOT 4 is nearly catastrophic.

You can guess where this is going.

See, the Europeans are crafty, and what they really meant was DOT 3/5, which is the European way of saying “DOT 3″.  To make things worse, the service manual calls for DOT 4.

And you guessed it: I topped it up with DOT 5.

I realized my mistake almost immediately, when the purple DOT 5 fluid combined with the DOT 4 fluid already in there to make these odd creamy-colored globuoles.  And if you’ve ever had that light-headed tingly feeling when you know you’ve really fucked up – well, you’ll know how I felt that afternoon.

What followed was 10 excrutiating hours of disassembling every single component in my bike’s brake system.  I’m talking about caliper pistons removed from calipers, delicate rubber O-rings from the deepest corners of the brake system, and even a disassembled master cylinder that took about ninety-six fingers to hold together when I had to re-insert the final spring clamp that holds everything together.

No, fair reader, it was not a fun job at all.  The odor of aerosol brake cleaner still fills my garage, and the only good thing is that I now have the cleanest front brake system in North America.

At least, until the next poor sod dumps DOT 5 fluid in his decidely non-DOT-5 brake system.