After 26 months of C5 ownership, it was time to bleed the brakes. My car only has 9K miles... but since brake fluid is hydroscopic.. time is the enemy.

I drove up the rhino ramps and the jacked the rear end up by spanning the rear suspenion bar and then used jack stands. This gave me ample room to get to the wheel cyl bleeder valves front and rear.

I then used a turkey baster to suck out most of the fluid from the master cyl.
This way you get to pull clean fuild faster thru the system. After placing the master cyl cover on top of the fender cover, I had the pleasure of watching it go sliding towards the front of the car and disappear into the inner fender :confused:

So I opened the front headlight and tried to reach thru the openning.. but I could not iget my arm in there.. :eek:

So I called the wife out who was able to fit a slender arm in there and rescue the part :D

I then filled the master cyl with the new fluid and crawled under the car. I startred with the driver front wheel. This is according to the instructions in the mighty-vac manual. I put a tube over the nipple and cracked the bleeder open with a 10mm wrench after pumping up the mighty-vac 15 times and gettting a good vacuum.

WOW! :eek: The first ounce or so was almost black... I mean the fluid in the lines was bad :reddevil

This was my first time using the mighty-vac and I tell you that it was a very pleasant experience. Very easy to use and very efficient. No pumping the pedal.. no sucking in air. It was a one man job and it went well and was quick!
Now.. my annual brake bleed will be an easy chore.

I topped off the fluid which was now totally clean and took her out for a spin.. pedal was high and firm... No more pedal abuse or streched and torn rubber internals... The right tool for the job..
mike :flag

 

Interesting. Normaly, you go RR, LR, RF, LF when bleeding.

You did it without taking the wheels off? Great contortions, I'm sure!

I use the Motive Products power bleeder. Similar concept, but it pressurizes the master cylinder instead.

Good deal!

Mike :flag

 

I did mine last weekend. I didn't like the fact that you can't completely evacuate all the old fluid from the master cylinder. Nothing like starting out with a master cylinder 1/2 full of contaminated fluid. :rolleyes:

Any ideas on overcoming this caveat?

 

Something I didn't mention. The Motive Products pressure bleeder has a reservoir in which you can put fresh fluid. You then pump up the pressure, and bleed until you get new fluid at each wheel. As you're draining out the old fluid, it's being refilled from the reservoir.

There will always be some fluid that you don't get out. A very small percentage of old fluid from the master cylinder won't hurt. Of all the existing fluid, it's the cleanest anyway.

Mike :flag

 

never done mine and I have 13k so I guess I'll be doing this soon!

Can y'all point me to those "bleed devices" and any other pointers you could add would be greatly appreciated :cheers:

 

Mike.. I did not remove the wheels.. The rear wheels were easy.. the front wasn't bad but did require a bit of squirm on my part.

GP.. I clean out most of the old fluid the best I could... The first wheel I bled, I ran fluid thru until it was very clear and clean and then some. This cleared out the resivoir and then I moved on.
mike :flag

 

I'm referring to the "two compartment" reservoir. The front compartment contains about 40% of the brake fluid volume and you can't get it sucked out. I dumped in some clean fluid and let it sit for a while thinkng it would at least dilute the crappy stuff left behind. I sucked that out and went with my final fill and flush. I thought about drilling through the top of the forward compartment to get it all out, but decided against it.

 

GP.. I could not get all the fluid out of the front section like you mentioned. It does drop in level when the rear side is drained. Thats what I did... I drained it and filled it up again... twice...
mike :flag

 

If you like the Mitey-Vac ... I used to... you'll love this one:
http://www.griotsgarage.com/catalog.jsp?&SKU=85700

 

Has anyone bought and installed in of the speed bleeders on a C5.
see http://www.classicperform.com/speed-...ed-bleeder.htm

If yes, which size?


[Modified by RedLandRocket, 3:43 PM 9/27/2001]

 

Here's the link for Motive Products.
http://www.motiveproducts.com/

They have a universal cap which works okay. Best bet is to get the pressure bleeder cap for the C5 from Kent-Moore.

Mike :flag

 

I have a brake question, maybe it applies to bleeding the brakes also. When ever I get on it in my C5, the brake pedal applies itself slightly whenever decellerating. It will stay that way until I use my foot to bring it back to the top. This also happened during a dyno, because I saw that my brake lights were on and no brakes were being applied. Vacuum leak ? Will bleeding brakes help ? It's a 2001 M6 coupe, I bought it with 6800 miles on it and it now has almost 10K. :confused:

 

ttt