Power Bleeder?

[gavin]

Ok, so first I'm not sure which section since this should go in, since there is no "brakes" section, but obviously it's more broad than 2nd gens.... but anywho.

has anybody made/bought a power bleeder? Similar to this here

I found a couple pages about making one, so I decided to take on this venture myself this weekend, since I was needing to replace a caliper, not having anybody to help me bleed the brakes, and not sure if my MightyVac hand vacuum pump would work.

Well I got 'er all hooked up and whatnot, but cannot keep pressure in the brake fluid reservoir.

At first, I realized the master cylinder cap I had purchased didn't come with the rubber seal, so got one, and still not sealing.

The pump and all that works fine; if I hook the hose up to my cap, and plug the end with my thumb, it holds the pressure.

Is the reservoir and caps designed to not allow any pressure? And by that, I mean I can't even get it to 1psi.

Luckily my MightyVac worked for me and I was able to get the new caliper bled, but I would still like to get new brake fluid in the system without needing the hand pump.

 

[BK_89iX]

If I remember right, there are one or more sneaky grooves on underside of the master cylinder cap that normally prevent vacuum/pressure inside the reservoir. Seal the cap grooves and it should work better...

BK

 

[gavin]

If I remember right, there are one or more sneaky grooves on underside of the master cylinder cap that normally prevent vacuum/pressure inside the reservoir. Seal the cap grooves and it should work better...

BK

you know... I've looked and looked... but maybe I'll just have to glob even more RTV into it lol.

thanks!

 

[gavin]

yup... sure enough there were 2 small veins on the inside rim of the cap.
smeared more rtv on it. will try it out again tomorrow!

 

[03 Explorer XLT]

I bought one of those kits to flush the fluid in my Trans Am. It has a cone shaped rubber plug that clamps in the opening of the brake fluid reservoir. It worked great until I had to take it off to refill it with fresh brake fluid. I had a little trouble getting it to reseal, but after a few tries it worked.

If you want to flush your brake fluid, and do it by yourself, this is worth the $70.

 

[corkey]

a mity vac should be able to suck it out the the bleeder better, that is the normal way to use them,

 

[gavin]

I bought one of those kits to flush the fluid in my Trans Am. It has a cone shaped rubber plug that clamps in the opening of the brake fluid reservoir. It worked great until I had to take it off to refill it with fresh brake fluid. I had a little trouble getting it to reseal, but after a few tries it worked.

If you want to flush your brake fluid, and do it by yourself, this is worth the $70.

it's a temp cap only used when bleeding. So shouldn't be any issues there.

a mity vac should be able to suck it out the the bleeder better, that is the normal way to use them,

that's what I ended up doing, but I'm missing parts to my MityVac, so it wasn't so easy. But I'd like to be able to use this, down the road, to also flush out the power steering fluid.
But the nice thing about this would be, no checking to see how full the reservoir is, since fluid would be getting pushed out of the container and into the reservoir. So just dump a big bottle of brake fluid in and there should be more than enough to flush all the lines.