Thread: bleeding brakes

Tweet

I have a set of wildwood brakes on my 57 chev, and would like
to know what is the best way to bleed the air out of the lines, etc
when it is only you doing the job...thanks rdobbs

I have fashioned a bleeder jar. It is a quart mason jar, with two fittiings soldered into the lid. One is a schrader valve, the other a piece of 1/8" straight tubing. The schrader valve I hook up to a vacuum pump, the other gets a length of 1/8" rubber hose. I'll put the hose on the bleeder screw, crank up the vacuum pump, and crack the screw open. Then I stand at the master cylinder and fill it while the vacuum jar pulls the fluid through.

Last time I did it to flush the fluid on my 69 chevelle, I also gently pumped the pedal to speed the process.

I used this setup to bleed the brakes on my 64 C10 after I replaced the hard lines and rebuilt the rear brakes.

First, I bled out the master cylinder, using the bleeder screw at the front of the cylinder. If your master does not have this, you could disconned the line and put the hose directly on the inverted flair nipple on the cylinder threaded fitting hole. I've done this also, and it works great. Just pour in fluid until air stops coming out, then disconnect the rubber hose and pop the hardline and fitting back in place.

Then i'll start at the wheel farthest from the master cylinder, and continue to add fluid until it looks like I am not getting air in the jug, just fluid; and I'll scoot over to the wheel and shut the bleeder screw.

Then I work my way to the wheel closest to the master cylinder.

Admittedly, I didn't get ALL the air out of the system on the C10. But, I got enough that I was able to safely move the truck around under its own power, if not drive it. Later when I had a helper, the remaining air was easily evacuated using the tried-and-true pump-the-brake technique.

tHE BRAKES ARE DISC ON REAR WITH BLEADERS ON EACH SIDE OF
THE CALIPER, SO I DON'T REALLY KNOW IF THEY HAVE BEEN MODIFIED,
BUT THE I DON'T KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT BRAKES....THANKS RDOBBS

Thanks Denny and others for your help..rdobbs