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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years. We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. Visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
We're going to show you how to bleed brakes by yourself using only a bottle and some fuel line to make a self-bleeding tool. Now this video is on this specific vehicle, however this application can be applied to just about any vehicle. The only thing that's really going to be different is the size and location of your bleeder screws. If you like this video please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many more vehicles as well as more generic help tips like this. If you ever need parts for your car, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com.
Real quick, we're going to talk to you about the tool we made here for bleeding brakes by yourself. This is very easy to make and inexpensive. All you do is: we just took an old soda bottle. You can use any kind of plastic bottle but just about this size is what you want. I drilled two holes in the cap. This is 3/16” fuel line. That's what you want to use because it sits pretty tight on top of the bleeder screws, so you don't need anything to tension it on to make sure no air or moisture gets in there while you're bleeding.
Drill a hole big enough to fit the fuel line through and then I threw a zip tie on there so we can hang it from the back of the vehicle and not worry about it falling or having somewhere to put it. If something happens this hose will stay down there and submerged in the fluid. We don't have to worry about this moving around or pulling out on us. It's about two feet of hose I have here. Then I just drilled a small vent hole in it because you do build up a little bit of pressure in there.
We'll take the bottle and that's brake fluid in the bottom. You want to make sure you clean out whatever fluid was in there. We'll pour some DOT 3 brake fluid in it. I'm going to fill it about a third of the way. We'll put the hose in. Put the cap on nice and tight. We're ready to bleed our brakes.
Our master cylinder reservoir is already clean because I had to fill the fluid and bleed the master cylinder in this due to a brake line failure we had, which is why we're bleeding the rest of our brakes now. If yours is dirty, wipe it off and make sure you don't let any dirt or contaminates get into the fluid. Remove your cap and fill the master cylinder all the way because we don't want this to bleed down and get air into it or we'll be starting our whole process over. Once it's full we'll throw the cap back on so nothing gets in there. Make sure you keep your fluid nice and tight too. You don't want any moisture getting in there.
The proper procedure for bleeding your brakes on the vast majority of vehicles including this one is to start at the furthest wheel from the master cylinder, which is going to be the passenger rear. We'll then go to the driver's rear, passenger front, and end on the driver's front. This is to make sure that any air or dirty fluid in the system gets flushed completely though the longest line to make sure that there isn't any trapped when we go closer and closer to the master cylinder. This vehicle does have an ABS module underneath just about the middle of the truck but it's a little more forward so these lines still hold true.
A rear mounted ABS unit will make this procedure the opposite of the way we're going to do it. If your vehicle has a rear mounted ABS module, this process will be reversed of the way we're going to do it with your brakes starting to bleed in the front and ending in the rear. This will depend on where your module is so just take a look at it and see which lines are the longest. If it's in the passenger rear corner then the farthest line is going to be the driver's front. If it's in the driver's rear, then the passenger front should be your farthest corner. A simple check over the brake lines should show you which one has the longest lines.
Underneath the truck on the inside of the frame rail, this sits actually just about dead under the driver's seat in the front. Our ABS module is not located in the engine bay like the majority of them are. It's still more to the front of the vehicle so the bleeding procedure will be the same.
Our 3/16 fuel line is actually just a little bit smaller than the bleeder fitting. You've got to kind of work it on there a bit but then it's on there good and tight. You get a nice seal. Just crack your bleeder screw loose. You don't want to spin this out much more than about a quarter of a turn because anything else could cause it to leak out of the side of the threads, which obviously means fluid isn't going to get pulled back in there, air is, and that's going to defeat the purpose of what we're trying to do here. Ours happen to be a 10 millimeter open end wrench to open those bleeder screws. Yours might be a different size depending on the specific calipers your vehicle's equipped with.
With the bleeder screw open, we'll now slowly fully depress the brake pedal because when we release normally air would come in but with that line submerged in clean fluid, more brake fluid will come in, moving the air out of our brake system. Now you should only have to do this a few times if you did something like a brake caliper or a line in the rear of the vehicle but our vehicle lost all the fluid in the system so we're going to be here awhile pushing all the air out.
After a little while, there will be no more air bubbles coming out and it is okay to get out of your vehicle and look at the hose. If there are no air bubbles in the hose, then there's nothing coming through and you've got it all out of that brake line.
Now that our brake fluid is nice and clear and there are no bubbles left in our line we'll close the bleeder screw with our 10 millimeter wrench. Make sure you get it nice and tight so it seals up. You want to make sure when you're removing the hose you pinch the bottom nice and tight. It is just rubber hose so you should be able to pinch it off, lift it up and let go to drain all that fluid back into the bottle instead of onto the ground and move onto our next cylinder.
Check the master cylinder after bleeding each corner of the vehicle because if the fluid runs too low and air gets into the master cylinder you'll need to bleed the cylinder and start the entire process over.
Now we're just going to go ahead and show you the process on the front brakes. It's exactly the same as the rear but these ones are a little older and we're going to have to go easy releasing the bleeder screws. Make sure we don't strip them. It may even be wise to use the box end of the wrench. Open that up and I'm going to use the one person method on this brake.
Now that we've got all the air out of our system and we have a good firm brake pedal inside the truck, we can go ahead and close our last line. Remove the hose. Top off our brake fluid for the final time. Reinstall our wheels and tires if you removed yours and you don't have to. We just did this to make it easier to show you. And you're good to go. Always dispose of automotive fluids properly and safely as not to create pollution. Brake fluid and other various hazardous waste from vehicles can generally be returned at your local parts store as they take in these kind of wastes or if you're local junk yard or dump has a hazardous waste bay, store these parts safely and bring them at the appropriate time.
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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I am going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this, to show you the correct way to install parts from 1aauto.com. The right parts installed correctly: that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.
In this video we are showing you how to bleed drum brakes. You are going to need to bleed the brakes if you've done any work on the brakes themselves or if you feel like your car is not providing good stopping power or pulling left or right during braking. Bleeding the brakes can sometimes cure some of those issues. Our subject vehicle is a '59 Pontiac Bonneville. It has manual adjust brakes, which are different than most newer cars which adjust automatically; just a note.
You'll need a wrench anywhere from 1/4 inch to 3/8 inch or 7mm-9mm depending on your application, latex or rubber hose and a plastic bottle, an assistant to help you out, and you'll want to probably raise and secure the car although not all vehicles will you have to raise to do the brake bleeding on. Brakes need to be assembled. All rotors and drums and pads and everything need to be on. In our video we do have the tires off the vehicle; you do not have to remove your tires to bleed the brakes.
The first step in bleeding your brakes is . this car is an old '59 Pontiac . what we are doing right now is we're opening up the master cylinder and adding brake fluid. You want to fill the master cylinder full and also you are going to want to stop and check it from time to time while you are bleeding the brakes. Usually we do one wheel and then we'll check the master cylinder then do the next wheel etcetera, etcetera. This is an old car, so you use DOT 3 hydraulic brake fluid. You have a helper in the vehicle pressing the brake for you: dear old dad in this one. Now we are in behind the brake drum here and this is the bleeder valve.
Before you bleed what you want to make sure is you get these loose. It may require you to put some penetrating oil on there or something. These are brand new so they'll be loose enough. You want to make sure you can get those loose because sometimes they will break off and then you'll need to replace your wheel cylinders or brake calipers or whatever, anyways. You are going to want to put your wrench on. What I have is this kind of handy bleeder's mate. You can see that one end of the hose goes down into the fluid and the other end of the hose I'm going to connect to that bleeder valve. I've got my wrench on the bleeder valve. I'm going to take my hose and I'm going to try and keep this where you can kind of see it, and put my hose on the bleeder valve.
Now this is somewhat the environmentally correct and clean way to do it. We're going to hopefully not spill any brake fluid all over the place. The other thing you can do is just put a rag or a catch pan underneath and bleed away. What I'm going to do, let me get this bottle secured, and you can watch right here, I'm going to tell my guy in the car to hit the brakes and then I'm going to open up the valve and you will see all the air bleed into the bottle. "All right hit the brakes. All right let off." Basically what I am doing is a series of hit the brakes and let off, which forces the fluid into the lines and we just redid the total brakes on this so there is no fluid in the line so it's actually going to take it a little bit to do. You want to just pump the brakes a few times to see if you can get anything?"?
"All right hit the brakes." There he goes. "Let off; brakes; let off." I'm saying hit the brakes so, "hit the brakes." I'm tightening it and then I'm telling him now, "let off." "Can you hit the brakes here?" I'm not hearing anything. We need to check the fluid. We're going to now check the fluid because we may have drained all the fluid from the master cylinder just filling the lines. We did one wheel until we had no bubbles. Now we've moved to the other side. We are going to repeat the procedure. We'll put our wrench on. "Okay, brakes." Then you see all those bubbles, hear them too. "Let off; brakes; let off; brakes; let off." Here I am in the rear of the car. This is the back of the brake drum. This is an old car, so you can see here this is the bleeder. It doesn't even have a tip on it. It's old style it just has a hole in it; probably the original cylinder for the car. I'm just going to do it the old way I'm just going to use a rag and kind of catch the fluid.
"Okay brakes; okay let off." We are actually having an issue here with this rear brake. Just to show you this is the bleeder and I'm putting a pick into it just to make sure. It does feel like it's got some stuff. I just took the bleeder all the way out and what you can do is just take a drill bit that's a little bit smaller and kind of run it through there. I'm just going to put the pick into the wheel cylinder as well and make sure there is no stuff. I did get a little bit of fluid; extra fluid came out. That can happen. If you are bleeding for awhile and you're not getting any fluid out it's probably a clogged bleeder or some stuff has gotten into your wheel cylinder.
On this car, like I said, we had done work to all four brakes so we bled them repeatedly. This car has manually adjusting brakes so we did find that we had to work the brakes a little bit, and make sure the adjusters were tight, and then work the brakes again. If you have a very old car that has manually adjusting brakes keep that in mind. What you will want to do is pump the pedal, make sure the brakes are working, then adjust them. While you are adjusting it spin the drum a little bit and basically adjust it until the brakes give a little resistance. Then, pump the brakes again. Then, spin the drum again. Like I said, adjust it until the drum gives a little resistance. Now we're just going to top off our fluid and we're putting on our wheels and tires and we'll go on a road test.
You've done your brake work, and you've bled the brakes, and you're getting ready to road test. Obviously that's the most dangerous part of what you are doing. Basically, first thing you do is just start up the car, apply the brakes, put it in gear. Make sure the brakes just hold the car in gear. If they hold the car in gear that's a good sign. Then, I would maybe go 5mph; put the brakes on make sure they stop the car. Then, 10mph and work your way up until you are comfortable that the brakes are working well enough. Then go road test it. When you road test it you want to feel for: does the car stop straight? Does it pull to one side or the other? If it pulls, you may want to look at bleeding the brakes again. Also keep in mind that the pulling could be something other than the brakes. That's it. We hope we helped you out and thank you.
Also before you road test, make sure you press on your brake pedal and you have a good solid pedal, it doesn't go all the way to the floor or anything like that. After you press down hard move your car and just make sure you're not leaking brake fluid anywhere under the car.
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