Wrote off brake fluid flushes as a shop upsell until a guy from the Toledo zone meeting broke down the math on a 2016 Civic

Kevin West · 2026-10-25T23:10:05.425945+00:00

I used to skip the brake fluid service on my own cars and tell customers it was fine unless the pedal felt soft. Then last month I sat in on a zone meeting in Toledo and an older tech named Ray pulled out a moisture tester and showed us a 2016 Civic that had 4 percent water in the reservoir after 6 years. He said the water drops the boiling point way down and that's how you get a pedal on the floor coming down a long grade. I always figured it was a slow wear item that could wait, but he had a caliper off a truck where the piston was pitted from the inside out. That got me, because a caliper job runs 300 to 400 bucks and a flush is maybe 120. I did my wife's car the next Saturday and the fluid coming out of the rear bleeder was straight black. Now I'm wondering how many of those faded pedal complaints I wrote off as normal were just old fluid. How do you all sell the flush to customers who think it's a scam?

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Wrote off brake fluid flushes as a shop upsell until a guy from the Toledo zone meeting broke down the math on a 2016 Civic | Auto Mechanics - Babble Community