tombrown

I'm having a crazy time bleeding my brake system. When I use my bowl and vacuum hand pump, I initially got some fluid and since then all I get is air with the odd drop of fluid.

The right rear bled OK initially but when I read that I should do the left rear first, I began again from the left rear. It bleed OK but then the right rear gave some fluid and just as I thought I was in good shape, it started sending air bubbles. The air bubbles got more and more until there was the only the odd drop of fluid popping through. What's more, the reservoir doesn't seem to be going down.

My problem is that I can't find the leak. When I pump the peddle, the fluid doesn't leak out anywhere that I can see. It also doesn't go down much. All the bleed screws are tight.

I had one of the calipers disconnected from the system but I put new copper washers on it and made sure it was perfectly clean when I reconnected it.

The lines all look dry except a the one that was disconnected. It's still a little wet from the fluid that came out of the system when I removed the caliper.

I'm getting so much air that I would think that I ought to be able to find the bad caliper by pumping the brakes and looking for fluid but that doesn't seem to be working. I only pumped the brakes for about 10 minutes, though.

I'd be grateful if someone would give me some direction on how to debug this system. I'm completely at a loss.

Should I rebuild all 4 calipers?


Thanks,

Tom Brown

Matt93SE

iTrader: (44)

instead of doing a vacuum bleed on the system, try just simply opening the bleeder screw and pumping the pedal itself.. wherever the air is will get forced out that way..


another thing is that you may just be sucking air in around the threads on the bleeder screw. try putting a glob of grease around the threads before you unscrew it.. this will keep air from seeping into the system around the threads while it's under vacuum.


try one or both of those and see what happens.

John van de Pol

If you have ABS, you are supposed to disconnect the electrical connectors on the ABS pump. Did you do this?

John

tombrown

Thanks guys. No ABS.

I've had bad hoses before and it has caused bleeding problems but this is different. I'm getting 99 percent air. The only way I can get much fluid at all is if I open the bleeder quite a bit and really pump like crazy. When I do that, I probably get 30% fluid with tons of bubbles. The leak must be massive.

Matt93SE

iTrader: (44)

if you can close all the bleeder screws and maintain pedal pressure (i.e. pump it up several times, then stand on the pedal.).. if the pedal doesn't move, then you've got no leaks or very small one.

your problem could be a blown caliper seal, but I'd think you would be able to find that if that were the case.