Originally Posted By: Ducked
Don't understand this American obsession with "brake cleaner". I have some, but it doesn't seem to be particularly useful for cleaning brakes.
Actually, its hugely useful for brakes and tons of other things on a vehicle.
Originally Posted By: Ducked
Its a mixture of volatile organic solvents. Volatile organic solvents are for cleaning oily things. Your brakes shouldn't be oily and if they are you've got problems that aren't going to be solved by a squirt of brake cleaner.
Lots of wrong-ness in that paragraph.
First, the BEST brake cleaner is pure tetrachloroethylene (Brakeleen red can or equivalent). The "green" formulae that are a soup of various solvents are not nearly as good, and IMO more dangerous since some of them are highly flammable. But the irrational fear of anything containing chlorine is strong. The fact that your experience is with one of the less effective soups instead of pure TCE is part of your negative experience. TCE is dry-cleaning fluid. If its safe for natural fiber and synthetic polymer clothing, its certainly safe for many metals and plastics on cars (test for compatibility on plastics). By and large it can be used on many more plastics and painted surfaces than the "green" solvent soups can. Many of them will soften, crinkle, or outright strip paint, but TCE will not. If you spill brake fluid on a painted surface under the hood, you can quickly hose it down with TCE brake cleaner to prevent the brake fluid from removing the paint.
Second- grease and oil DO get into the braking system, especially on solid-axle drum brake vehicles where there is seepage from the axle lube or wheelbearing grease into the drum area. If the leakage is normal, it won't spread as far as the braking surfaces but it will accumulate around the hub and is best cleaned when doing a brake job. Brakeleen is good for that, and also for removing dust and brake fluid contamination.
Hot-water washing is OK for the brake SHOES, but you really don't want to be doing that to the backing plates, adjuster linkages, and other components unnecessarily- and its unnecessary because effective, non-corrisive, non-flammable, cheap alternatives like TCE brake cleaner are available.