How To Quickly Flush & Bleed Brakes By Yourself

Hey this is a video by Pet Rock. And I'm working on a friend of a friends 2003 Ford Escort ZX2. No idea what size the motor is. Probably 2.0. Small. Anyway, I'm in the middle of a rebuilding the brake calipers. And in the process I figured I'd also bleed the brakes and flush the brake system cause the brake fluid is pretty old and nasty. Don't mind the fact that the brake is kind of already taken apart. I'm waiting for new guide pins to go in here because the old ones were all rusty and there's my cat. He wants to come and help. Anyway, so I'm waiting for new guide pins to come to my local auto parts store. So in the process I'm going to bleed the brakes. I'm going to do all four sides but in this video I'm just going to show one. Because once you know how to do one you know how to do them all. I'm going to use a vacuum pump method, a hand vacuum pump, that has worked well. Very well for me. I'm going to be using a Mityvac hand pump. I picked this up a number of years ago. Almost 10 years ago from a local auto parts store. They still make them. Mityvac is one of the more popular brands. I don't remember how much it was but it came with a kit of a whole bunch of adapters and some hoses and stuff. Ok, the first thing you want to do before taking off any brake components is you want to find and clean off the brake fluid reservoir. The reason being is you don't want to, when you open up the cap you don't want any dirt that's around the cap getting into the brake system. It's a headache and you don't want to deal with it so just, if you clean it off first you'll avoid any problems. So once you've cleaned it off you remove the cap and then to speed things up I like to suck out as much of the brake fluid as I can. The more brake fluid you take out now the less brake fluid you have to bleed out later. Clean off any fluid that you may have dripped. This car takes DOT 3 fluid, DOT3 brake fluid. Brake fluid and paint don't mix very well. So you want to make sure that you don't drip it anywhere that you care about. Next what you want to do is you want to fill it up with fresh fluid being careful not to drip it on your paint. Since we're going to be bleeding this you can fill it as far as you can go. All the way to the top because we're going to be sucking it back out anyway. Once I have it filled with new fluid I like to take the cap and just put it, rest it sort of on top of it so one, so when the fluid gets sucked out it doesn't create a vacuum inside the reservoir and also so to prevent any dust or other contaminants that may be flying around this area from accidentally getting into the brake fluid. So once you've got that set, the next thing you want to do is get yourself a set of line wrenches. Similar to this one. If you notice it's different then a regular open end wrench in that it will actually hold onto more flat sides of the hex bolt or head of the bleeder screw then a traditional open end wrench will do. You can get away with using a regular open end wrench but if this thing is rusty you'll strip it. It's really soft metal and so it's very easy to strip. So you want to avoid that as much as you can so you. The first thing you want to do is get a set of line wrenches and loosen up, make sure the bleeder is loose so that it will open and close easily. Once you have that set, the next thing you need to do is choose a set of hose, a clear hose that will fit over the bleeder nice and snug. You want to have it as air tight as possible so that as you're bleeding, because there is going to be a vacuum on this hose. And once you start the vacuum you don't want air coming in through the connection there. So you want to have as good, nice tight a seal as possible. This one I got a set of nylon hose I picked up from another local auto parts store. You can pick it up for like a couple cents per foot. You want the clear kind so you can see the fluid transferring through. Anyway, so you set up however many adapters you need. In this case I need one adapter to go from the small diameter hose to the larger diameter hose then to this reservoir that comes with the kit and then this hose that's going to ultimately go to the pump. So that's basically the set up. There's not really much else to it. So now I get a small, in this case 8mm wrench. Set it on the bleeder and then pump it up to about anywhere between 10 to 15 psi. If it doesn't hold that means you've got an air leak somewhere in your, in your lines. Once you do that, then you crack the bleeder. So if you notice there is mostly air and fluid coming out. This could either be a whole ton of air in the lines or it could be air coming in through either right by the junction where the bleeder is or through where the hose is connected. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to cut off the flow and then watch it. Keep the pressure going. And if you notice it's regular intervals which means that air is probably coming from where the hose is connected to the bleeder. So to seal up the air, air pocket I like to get a little glob of grease. Any grease will do. And smear it at the joints and at the base of the bleeder screw. The base of the bleeder screw is where the most common location for air to get in. So what will happen is this grease will, while messy, it will basically create a seal around it. Not allowing air to get in. Ok, so now I've got a steady flow of fluid coming out. So basically you try to keep the PSI's above 10. You keep on doing this and filling up the, filling up the reservoir. Making sure to keep an eye on it so it doesn't over fill. It is kind of small. And just keep doing this until you see fresh fluid like that coming through. Once you see fresh fluid then you can close off, you can close off the bleeder screw. You can then remove your hose. Making sure that the pressure, the pressure is still applied so that when you remove this all the fluid that is in the line is going to get sucked in. Like that, rather then spilling it out onto your driveway. So once you have that done you can suck the rest of the fluid through by pumping the, pumping the vacuum pump a few more times and that caliper is done. From between this caliper and the brake master cylinder it only took that much fluid to drain out the old fluid and get the new fluid in the lines. So now that this sides done you clean off the bleeder valve and move onto the next one following the same procedure all the way around. Just keep an eye on the master cylinder. Do not let it run dry. Cause if you let it run dry your going to be letting air into the system and you're going to have to keep bleeding for longer and longer and longer. The key to this whole thing is to seal up the end by the bleeder valve with the grease if you need to. So no air gets in through that connection giving you a false positive, false negative I should say of the state of the fluid. You don't want it to trick you into thinking that you have air in your lines. Anyway, so now that the fluid is nice and clean I'm going to clean up and move onto the next one. This has been another video by Pet Rock. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Hopefully it helped you out. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please leave them in the comments section. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you want to some more videos.

Channel: Pet Rock's Garage

Views: 1,723,443

Rating: 4.7587609 out of 5

Keywords: Pet Rock, PetRock, Pet Rock's Garage, PetRock'sGarage, Pet Rock Garage, Pet Rocks Garage, PetRocksGarage, repair, replace, install, fix, How To, change, remove, Ford ZX2, Ford, Ford Escort (Automobile Model), Escort, ZX2, Ford Motor Company (Organization), Escort ZX2, brake, caliper, brakes, Disc Brake (Invention), Vacuum Pump (Invention), Brake Bleeding, bleed, flush, brake flush, bleed brakes, flush brakes, bleeder, Mityvac, MV8000, Vacuum, tutorial, brake fluid, pump, mv8500, fluid, step by step

Id: MPL7bpgcmVI

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 28 2014