Car has around 203k miles. I replaced the brake calipers, hoses and pads. The calipers were shot inside, the hoses were starting to show cracks and the pad were due for replacement.

The fluid looked a little dicey so I hitched up my Motive Products power bleeder and used a little compressed air to clear out any old fluid in the system. My thinking was that I didn't want to introduce any old, cruddy fluid into all that brand new stuff. That was probably a mistake. When I started bleeding the system, the air bubbles just kept coming out. I eventually used five quarts of fluid. The good news is that there was some sediment and quite a bit of color in the fluid that eventually cleared so the flushing was probably a good thing.

My question is does it make sense that it would take that much fluid to push out the air? I realize those hoses are pretty big inside and there was no fluid in the lines either because of the compressed air treatment but five quarts still seems like a lot. At $8 a pop that was a pretty pricey flush.

 

The idea when flushing brakes is to NOT introduce air. The new fluid does a fine job of displacing the junk on its own.

 

I would try bleeding it the old fashioned way with 2 people, one pressing on the brake pedal.

It probably doesn't have ABS, so it should be a piece of cake to bleed all the air out.

 

+1, you should not use compress air to blow out old fluid, but since you have done so, there is no other choice but just keep bleeding one corner at a time, if all the old fluid is out and you can just reuse the new fluid that you bleed out.

 

Lesson learned. I just didn't like the idea of pushing all that junk into my new calipers and hoses.

I only have one left with a little bit of air. I will give that a try.

I also thought of that but I didn't like the idea of putting that old grungy stuff back into the system. I just thought that those steel brake lines are so tiny ... there's no way they could have that much air in them. Anyway it was a mistake from which I hope my Maxima.org brothers and sisters can learn.

Thanks again to all of you guys who responded.

 

I recently purchased a 2000 SE-L that needs tons of restoration. One of the duties was replacing the dirty brake fluid in the brake cylinder reservoir that appears to never have been bled from the calipers. To keep that dirty fluid out of my calipers I first removed all fluid from the reservoir and cleaned it's filter. I then used my MityVac manual extractor as a pump instead of a vacuum. Filling the mityvac container with a quart of new dot3 fluid I then pumped fluid up to it's hose that connects to the bleeder screw. After connecting it to the caliper bleeder screw I slightly opened it and immediately began pumping fluid into caliper.

Due to gravity this takes more effort but will leave no dirty fluid nor air in the braking system. I had a friend extracting fluid from the brake cylinder reservoir while I was pumping new fluid into it.

 

That's a very good idea!

 

I wanted to let you know that the car is finally running, the brakes finally released all the air bubbles and the brakes now work great. Thanks for all the advice and hand-holding. Maxima.org is a life saver.

 

Thank you for the idea JH. Per this thread I used my MityVac to clean out the reservoir last weekend. So I'll start the bleeding process with a clean reservoir.

Glad to see everything is working out RB.