If you like/use this stuff, you better buy it up while you can get it.
Braking News: ATE Super Blue Deemed Illegal for US Distribution*|*Hooniverse
Last night, we heard through the grapevine that Alfred Teves Enginieering (ATE, a division of Continental) would be discontinuing the sales and distribution of the popular “Super Blue” variant of its DOT 4 brake fluid. Apparently the Super Blue fluid has run afoul of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard after nearly 15 years on the market for being blue. For the correspondence Continental sent to their distributors, and more of the story, click through the break.
It seems that the federal government has taken 15 years to figure out that Super Blue fluid is, in fact, blue in color. Evidently there is a stipulation that all brake fluids distributed in the US must be either clear or amber in color. This begs the question, why is that a law? The blue color was one of the major selling points of Super Blue fluid, as it made a complete bleed of your braking system much easier to accomplish. I would use ATE Super Blue and ATE Typ 200 fluids alternately (Typ 200 is the amber version of Super Blue), filling the master cylinder with one color, and when the color coming out through the caliper changed, it was easy to tell that all of the old fluid had been expunged from the system.
As this is effective immediately, the supply line for this brake fluid has already dried up. That said, there are likely some retail establishments that will continue to have it on their shelves until it is sold out, and some of those retailers will likely continue importing Super Blue under the auspices of “For Off-Highway Use Only”, but we’ll see. In the long run, I guess these are the brakes…
