the person that had the car before me, decided to "change" the brake fluid. he took a turkey baster, suck what ever fluid he could out with that and poured in new fluid. and thats it. and i noticed the brake pedal was a little mushy


so i bled the brakes today, going in the rr, lf, rf, lf order. and after i was done went and drove it around the block, and the pedal was still a little mushy.

looked in the fsm and discovered that i might need to also bleed the master abs cylinder or some thing like that but 1, the fsm had very vague instructions and 2, i looked around in the engine bay and found no such thing. it said it should be on the passenger side near the fire wall ish. did verts not come with abs?

any one have any ideas on this?


EDIT!

and also how do i drain the reservoir completely? because there is still old fluid in there. and in the lines i wanna drian everything so i can put all new stuff in there. fsm sucks for instrusctions.

 

to drain it all out, put new fluid in, and bleed until new fluid comes out. If you don't see the abs module, you prolly don't have abs.

so did you not touch the lr or just forgot to list it?

Try bleeding in this order: rr-lr-rf-lf. If that doesn't work something is leaking.

ALSO: when you start bleeding, start bleeding at the master by cracking the lines open a couple times, do this as you would with the bleeder screws on the calipers.

 

Get a friend also you didn't mention if you were doing the two man bleed or not.

 

sorry i mixed them up. i did them in the order you mentioned.

and yes my brother in law was doing the pedal pumping

 

If your getting a mushy pedal, do the rr-lr-rf-lf. ATTACH a clear hose to the bleeder valve (can get at home depot) and use a close end wrench ONCE you have the bleeder loose (use a 6 point socket to loosen a stuck bleeder or you may strip it).

Now:

1. Have buddy push brake pedal 3 times fully, on 3rd hold.
2. You open bleeder and close it. You do not want your buddy to "bottom out" the brake pedal. You get the best bleed by letting just a bit of fluid out like 1-2 seconds, but not to the point it stops coming out.

Repeat step 1 and 2 until you see a steady stream of brake fluid in the clear hose. Any bubbles and you have air still left. Should not take more than repeating 5 times. You should have a solid brake pedal after doing all four corners.

Old fluid will not be in the reservoir if you bleed correctly. As a matter of fact, I would repeat the bleed about 10 times at each corner to ensure you have fresh fluid. Some brake fluid comes in different colors that way you know when you have fresh fluid coming out the line. If the pedal is still smushy (should not be), you may have a bad brake master cylinder and will need replacing.

 

'technically' your not suppose to pump at all, just push down once, and open the bleeder. It works just as well, and by pumping it, you can potentially get a bit of air mixed in with the fluid.

 

+1


its best to have another person who understands "SIMPLE" instructions like

DOWN !
HOLD !
UP !

I had a friend who was so retarded that I almost want to throw my wrench at him ...

Start bleeding closest to the MC, work your way out, then repeat. you are good to go.

 

Wrong. You bleed furthest from the MC first, then work your way closer.

 

You could try this (from nopistons):

 

All my life I've been hearing that the order in which you bleed each caliper is of "critical importance". For merely exchanging old fluid for new it doesn't make a bit of difference. Many years ago, after completely rebuilding a brake system, I guess it may have made the job go a little faster prioritizing them by line length - faster route to a firm pedal. Today, most shops push new fluid from the reservoir or pull it using a Mighty-Vac at the caliper so it's irrelevant even then. BTW, you can get a China knock-off at Harbor Freight for about $20. Most of us do-it-yourselfers tend to pull air back into the caliper with the two-man approach. Since I started using a Mighty-Vac I haven't had a spongy pedal.

As for the ABS, every car is different. IF you have ABS there could be air trapped in the line that is impossible to reach from the caliper bleeds.

Again, what's really important is preventing air from being pulled back into the bleeder. The dirty fluid in the reservoir may just be a film of dirt from the old fluid still clinging to the sides. If so you can remove it with a clean paper towel or shop rag.

 

hmm, wtf did I say ... hmm ...

you right ... this is what happens when you are exhausted ...

 

I've often wondered about the reasoning behind the commonly accepted advice to bleed the rears first, especially given that in a modern car there is no connection between the front circuit and the rear.
I don't think it makes any difference whatsoever what sequence you use...bled is bled.

 

Ahh so confusing.

 

Check this out:
http://www.harborfreight.com/brake-b...kit-92474.html
I've used the same MightyVac MV8000 I bought twenty years ago. I've bled a lot of brakes since then.

 

If you use the clear tubing you will know when the fresh fluid is all the way to the corner you are bleeding. The old fluid will be dark, maybe even black if it hasn't been bled in a while. The color of the new fluid is amber/honey color, very light color. When you are bleeding clean fluid, you are done at that corner. THen move on to the next corner.

The different color fluids are used by racers/autocrossers who change the fluid before each track day. In this case, the 'old' fluid has not had time to turn dark. Then you need the color change to identify when the new fluid is completely through the system. Colors are usually available in blue and amber.

I do this once per year on all my cars.

 

The last time I bled the brakes I put clear tubing in a glass jar with the bottom tubing immersed in brake fluid. Opened the bleeder screw and just pumped till it should have pumped all the old fluid out. It can't draw air back into the system this way. It worked so well, especially since I was doing it by myself that I will keep doing it this way.

 

still wrong. To "BLEED" the system yes, but to FLUSH out old ****, you start closest, that way you clean out the MCR the fastest. you should do the furthest away method if you still got a mushy pedal, yes.

At work, we pressure flush all the brake systems, and usually if the car comes in with a decent pedal, we flush it, it comes out with a decent pedal. Also FC's are a pain in the *** to bleed brakes, Volvo's are so much easier to work with.