Brake Caliper Bleeding

[STIBungy]

Hi guys,

I did a search on brake bleeding and didnt find a whole lot of info on it other than 1 person who had a dropped brake pedal.

Anyhow, decided to bleed my brake system tonight as one piece of troubleshooting why my front rotors warped so quickly.

The story on my 07 FX35. I bought it back in July. Brakes were warped and I drove it like that for a couple of months. Then I ordered some OEM pads and slotted front rotors off Ebay. I didnt install them yet but decided to take the existing rotors and have Napa turn them. Installed them back in and they were warped again. I figured maybe they didnt turn it properly. I then installed the new Ebay rotors along with the OEM front pads. Read the instructions on bedding the pads by going up to about 40mph or so and braking fairly hard to nearly stop and then repeating that several times. After about 3rd or 4th time, I noticed the infamous steering wheel shake again...@#$^! Even after the first brake to a stop, I didnt have a good feeling about it.

I was hoping that there was some air in the rear brakes causing the fronts to overwork, thus overheating the front rotors and warping them. No such luck. No air on all 4 calipers.

One thing I noticed was that the rear bleed screws are different size than the fronts. The fronts required a 10mm wrench while the rears took an 8mm. Also, the nipple sizes are different between the fronts and rears. Kind of annoying to have different sized bleeders between front and rear.

Thanks goodness for my Power Bleeder. That made brake bleeding go alot faster. :D

---------- Post added at 10:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:29 PM ----------

Here are some pics I took:

Front caliper bleed screw:



Rear caliper bleed screw:



Power Bleeder:

 

[barkley]

Hi, warped rotors are cause by excessive quick heating or cooling/also when wheels are not torqued correctly this can make it worse... If your rotors are warped and you machine them, usually this will not correct the problem for long. Bleeding brakes will not help with rotor warping,,,a high quality rotor is very important and cleaning the surface on the hub behind the rotor is very important. Good luck!

 

[la_fx35]

^:plus1: Bleeding the brakes will not do anything to a warped rotor. I think you just wanna show us how easy it is to bleed the brakes using the Motive Power Bleeder, didn't you

 

[shadow191]

Air in the lines won't cause a brake imbalance. Unless you did brake work before, there shouldn't be air in the lines anyways. But it was probably good to flush the fluid anyways; supposed to do that every couple of years? I find the FX brakes annoying to bleed. The rear caliper bleed screws are different, but on top of that, air just stays trapped back there forever. I swapped to SS lines a few months back. Front Akebono's took no time at all to bleed. Rear calipers took so much fluid and it took a long time for all the air to come out. Not sure why since the lines were shorter than the front and the caliper isn't that big so I don't even see how much air could get in.

 

[CowTipper]

Power bleeder? Am I the only guy here who puts his 8 year old son in the driver's seat and have him pump the brakes while I loosen and tighten the bleeder screw?

 

[STIBungy]

LOL! That's what I used to have my gf do. This was a very worthwhile investment. Makes it very easy to bleed my brakes when I'm out on the race track too!

Power bleeder? Am I the only guy here who puts his 8 year old son in the driver's seat and have him pump the brakes while I loosen and tighten the bleeder screw?

 

[CowTipper]

LOL! That's what I used to have my gf do. This was a very worthwhile investment. Makes it very easy to bleed my brakes when I'm out on the race track too!

Yes, my when my wife and I were dating, and I was driving a crap-box 84 Honda Prelude (the year was 1997) she was my brake pumper. We had it down to a science at one point because we were doing it so much. And back then, I used to just let the brake fluid spray out everywhere!