Where Do We Get Our Cars Trucks Brake Bleeder Kit Len Answers These Questions and MORE

You got questions, I've got answers. Let's get into it.

Hey, friends, it's Len here from A1 Auto. So, in today's video, we wanted to go over questions and answers. You watch all of our videos, and you leave some questions and comments in the comment section. That's great. When I read these questions, I have always wanna get back to you, but I have to wait for one of these questions and answers videos to be able to come out and do it.

One of the questions that I have comes from Sam Lopez, he asked me essentially, where do we get all these cars that we can do the videos on for you? Well, unfortunately, I can't really give you the details on where we get the cars, but I can tell you why we get the cars. While we looked into the future a little bit, and we could tell that we're gonna have an issue trying to get parts to be able to do the installation videos, we also anticipated having an issue trying to find a whole bunch of used cars to make our fun and instructional videos for you guys to be able to see. So, 1A Auto decided that they go out and they buy a whole bunch of used cars for us. We're gonna park them up in that top lot. Of course, you probably saw the video on a sappy situation where we parked them underneath the trees and, of course, the sap got all over them.

I'm not gonna get too much into that because you probably already saw that video. But, of course, we do have a lot of cars up there for us to go through. So, of course, I can use my imagination, I can come up with some fun videos, and we can put in a whole bunch of parts into these things so you can see how to do it. So, thank you to A1 Auto for getting us all these parts and cars to make you these fun instructional videos, and thank you for the question.

Now, my second question comes from Nick the car guy. Essentially, what he's asking me is where can I get the kit so I can bench-bleed my master cylinder? Well, Nick, for me personally, I don't actually have one of those kits. I like to create things on my own because it's kind of like what I like to do. I do have access to automotive parts, so I have a little fitting that I can pretty much put on there. It's gonna match up to the master cylinder itself. And then I have some brake line that comes right across like this. Essentially, I just wanna form the brake line so it comes up around the outside of the reservoir and then down into the reservoir. So, imagine it's sitting up approximately this high, and the fluid's right about where my thumb is.

The reason why I wanna have it set up like this is so that when I'm pumping up that master cylinder or trying to push the fluid through, it's gonna force air up and through the line like this, and then down and into the fluid. When the air evacuates, it's gonna go up and out like this, and when I release that brake pedal, it's gonna suck only brake fluid back up into this line and potentially back into the master cylinder. That's how we're gonna bench-bleed it. Can you get a kit that's gonna have every single accessory or adapter that you're gonna need to be able to do the master cylinder that you're doing? Yeah, of course, you can. It's probably gonna cost you a couple of bucks if not a lot of bucks, but if master cylinders are things that you do every day, all day, maybe you work in a shop, well, that's probably something that you're gonna want to have. For me personally, if I'm just doing a master cylinder in the driveway or just one every once in a while, it's a lot cheaper just to get myself some brake line and a fitting that fits.

Stick with me here. Question number three, we've got a question from Marshall Border. He's wondering, how often do I need to flush out the brake fluid in my system? That's a great question, Marshall. A lot of people don't necessarily think about bleeding or flushing their brake fluid. Most people probably wouldn't even think about changing their oil. Good thing they have that little reminder sticker up on their windshield, which kind of helps them out a little bit, but nobody really has that for their brake fluid. Who thinks about flushing their brake fluid?

For brake fluid, you can't actually judge by mileage overall. What you really wanna think about is the time that the fluid's been inside your system. Like you said in your question, your vehicle's got approximately 43,000 miles on it, which isn't very many miles, but it is actually eight years old already. A lot of things can happen over those eight years. If you live in a humid environment, there's a possibility moisture could have made its way underneath your brake fluid cap, especially if for some reason you check the fluid, you left it a little loose, or maybe it just wasn't screwed on there tightly or even crooked a little bit.

If moisture made its way inside that brake fluid, it's considered contaminated. Moisture has a much lower boiling point than the brake fluid itself. Your brakes, overall, are gonna get very hot, especially if you're using them for severe driving. Maybe you're driving through the city where you speed up and then you have to stop at the street light, the light finally turns green, you speed up again. The next street light turns red, now you gotta stop at that one. At this point, your brakes are getting super hot, or maybe even just drive down on mountains, such as maybe Mt. Washington or something.

We've all seen those stickers that say, "This car climbed Mt. Washington." That's great. It also had to drive down Mt. Washington and they probably had to use their brakes the entire way down. At that point, you could potentially be heating up your brake fluid past its boiling point, and you might notice you have a little bit of a brake failure or your brakes just kind of seem like they're a little bit spongy. If your brakes feel like they're spongy for any reason, you wanna make sure that you flush out that brake system. You also wanna make sure that you don't have a leak any place. If you look at your master and it looks like it's low for any reason, more than likely you have a leak, or for some reason, the fluid could be evaporating out of there. If the fluid's evaporating out of there, that means it's very worn out.

Also, a good time to flush your braking system is if you're doing something with the hydraulics, such as may be the master cylinder, like I talked about before. You have some brake lines that lead down to some flex hoses, and then those flex hoses either lead to a caliper in the front or sometimes a caliper or a wheel cylinder in the rear. Any of those things that you happen to open up, maybe there was a leak or you're just replacing it due to wear, or tear, or something the like, you wanna make sure that you flush out any of the existing brake fluid that's in the system, it really only makes sense. When you do it, you need to make sure that you flush it out with the manufacturer-specified brake fluid. If it calls for DOT 3, you can use DOT 4, but you definitely don't want to use DOT 5.

The reason why that is is because DOT 3 and DOT 4 brake fluid is hydroscopic, which essentially means it's gonna draw in moisture from the environment. So, if that cap's left a little bit loose, just the moisture that's floating around the air or even the moisture that's coming off of me right now, because it's a little hot in here, could potentially be getting drawn into that braking system and, of course, it's gonna contaminate the of fluid. DOT 5 brake fluid is hydrophobic, which essentially means if you try to put it in a cup with some water, it's gonna just stay separated. It's not necessarily gonna mix in all together. So, by mixing DOT 3 or DOT 4 with DOT 5 brake fluid, you could potentially have a major braking issue.

Now, the next question comes from a person named Marcson. Essentially, first, they mentioned that they loved the videos, they learned a lot. So, thank you very much, Marcson, I love to hear that. It means everything to me. What their question was though, is when I'm depressing a caliper, what tool is it that I use? It's called a caliper depression tool, and there's a couple of different types. Why would there be a couple of different types, and why does it matter? Sometimes you're gonna have a caliper with one piston like this right here. To push back this caliper, obviously, you could use a tool that looks like this. It's like a little C-clamp plier. And what I would wanna do is just come right inside the center-right here, and then slowly depress that caliper piston in.

Now a tool like this can work great for a single-piston caliper. It can also work for a dual-piston caliper. Now, for the dual-piston caliper, I could use this tool and I could try to go like this, but if I was to press in one piston at a time, it's probably gonna try to push out the other piston. So, if you had this tool right here, you could just use one of your old brake pads. Definitely don't use a new one if you're gonna be replacing them. Just go ahead and put it in there like this, and then come right in the center, and then squeeze in both pistons at the same time. So, that's how you would use this caliper depressor. But if you have a quad-piston caliper or a caliper that has four pistons or more, using this isn't necessarily gonna work because you're gonna have four pistons that need to push in at the same time.

Essentially, you'll have two pistons that come along this side right here, and you're gonna have two pistons that are on the other side right there. Now, these type of calipers aren't really very common unless you have like a more expensive or a specialty car. You'll see it a lot of times on like a Corvette or a performance-type vehicle that needs heavy braking. So, using this caliper depression tool isn't necessarily gonna work right for that. Because like I said, you have to push in all the pistons at the same time. Now, there's another type of tool that you can use that looks just like this. This, when I try to turn it, it's gonna actually push out both these sides at the same time and it'll be able to push in the pistons all at the same time.

As I continue doing this, you can tell that it continues to spread until the point that all four pistons or six pistons, whatever you might happen to have, are pressing in at the same time. Can you use this as opposed to using this on any caliper? Yeah, you can. You can use this depression tool right inside this single-piston caliper right here and pushing the piston, just like you would with any other caliper piston. So, if you could only buy one tool, I would go with this one right here over this one.

Now, my last question comes from Robert Collazo. Essentially what he's asking me is when you're replacing the struts, is there a difference between the left or the right, and how can you tell? A lot of times on struts, what you're gonna probably notice is when you try to order them, they may or may not have the same part number. A lot of times on your strut if you're trying to order them, it has the same part number for left or right, that means that it's interchangeable. But more commonly, they're not necessarily gonna be interchangeable.

So, you're probably gonna see that they probably have two different numbers. You're probably gonna wonder which one's the left and which one's the right. Sometimes on the strut, you might be lucky enough to find a marking or a sticker that tells you front left or front right. But a more common way of telling which strut is which, left or right, would be the fact that it's probably gonna have some sort of mounting point located on one side of the strut, whether it's for a sway bar link or maybe even a flex hose of some sort. Generally, you're gonna have something that mounts onto the strut, and if it does, it's gonna have a bracket that's located either on the left or the right. So, essentially, you just wanna hold it up to the vehicle, take a look and see where that sway bar link or the flex hose is mounted and match it up.

Another way that you might be able to tell if it's left or right is looking at the top, right up along the struck cap. This is the area that's gonna mount to the body of the vehicle itself. Sometimes these holes aren't necessarily gonna match up. If you try to put the right one on the left side, you might notice that the holes, for some reason, are a little bit oblong. Two of them line up, but the other one doesn't. If that's the case, go ahead and try it on the other side of the car and you probably figured out where it's supposed to go.

Now, thank you very much for that question, Robert. It's a great question because strut's something that a lot of people tend to do on their own in their driveway. It's something that you wanna make sure that you're being as safe as possible, and when you do do your struts, make sure you get yourself a four-wheel alignment when you're done.

I hope you like the video, I hope you learned a little something. If you did, you wanna talk about it, leave it in the comment section below, especially if you have another question for me. I love to read them, and who knows? Maybe it'll let up in the next questions and answers video that I do. I hope you like the video, if you did, smash on the Like button for me, it would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell, that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.

Wanna start it again?

Oh, sure.

Loop. Well, battery... And sometimes they're gonna be oblong. Are they even? I didn't even look at them, I just assumed. Did I say it? I forgot to say share the video.